Tottenham Hotspur will listen to offers this month for Etienne Capoue, who has fallen from favour under the new manager, Tim Sherwood.
The France international, who joined from Toulouse for a fee rising to £11m last August, has said that he loves the passion of the English game. But it has been made clear to him that he is at the bottom of Sherwood's midfield pecking order and he may benefit from regular football elsewhere, particularly as he looks to force his way into France's World Cup squad.
Sherwood did start Capoue in midfield alongside Mousa Dembélé at Manchester United on New Year's Day, in Tottenham's 2-1 Premier League win, but the manager has tended to prefer the France youth international Nabil Bentaleb, whom he knows from his previous role as the club's academy co-ordinator. Capoue is aware that Sherwood's options in midfield will swell further when Sandro, Paulinho and Gylfi Sigurdsson return from injury and that the manager would play any of them ahead of him.
Capoue looked imposing at the beginning of the season and it was notable that André Villas-Boas, the then manager, started him ahead of Sandro against Swansea City and Arsenal. He suffered an ankle injury at the Emirates that ruled him out for two months but Villas-Boas reintegrated him, before his fortunes turned again following Sherwood's appointment and Bentaleb's elevation.
Lewis Holtby, who has also struggled for playing time under Sherwood, although he has been hampered by a minor injury, has emerged as a target for his former club, Schalke. But while Tottenham would not block the midfielder's permanent sale, they would demand a fee considerably in excess of the bargain £1.5m they paid to Schalke in January of last year. The Bundesliga club would prefer a loan deal.
Nacer Chadli's agent, meanwhile, says that his client wants to leave Tottenham in order to protect his World Cup ambitions with Belgium. Chadli, like Capoue, was signed in the summer and has failed to hold down a starting place. His agent, Daniel Evrard, said: "The World Cup is arriving so it's a problem."
