Swansea City have placed a £5million (Dh28.8m) offer with Scottish champions Celtic for their in-demand South Korean star Ki Sung-yueng.
However, the Welsh club faces significant competition from elsewhere in the English Premier League for the player's services, and are yet to convince the South Korea international of their credentials to further his career.
Ki, 23, is entering his fourth season in Scottish football. Originally signed for £2.1m from FC Seoul in December 2009, he is one of a group of central midfielders along with Victor Wanyama and Scott Brown that Celtic would be prepared to cash in on should the right offer arrive.
Everton, Fulham, Queens Park Rangers, Sunderland and Wigan Athletic are also interested in Ki, who is a regular for his national side and speaks fluent English courtesy of a secondary education spent in Australia. The player is understood to have doubts about Swansea's long-term ambitions and would prefer a Premier League club where he could play European football.
Ki, whose current contract runs expires next year, was on a post-Olympics holiday on Saturday as Celtic dropped two points at Ross County. His club travels to Helsingborgs for the first leg of a critical Champions League play-off round tie on Tuesday.
"I've not seen him in a month so I don't know what he's thinking at the minute," said Celtic manager Neil Lennon last week. "Hopefully when I see him eventually, which hopefully will be Sunday, he can let me know what he's thinking.
"They will have to pay a good fee for him. I've had no contact with anyone — I don't know if Peter Lawwell has — but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a few clubs interested in him, with his contract situation being as it is as well. The games I watched from the Olympics, he played well.
"He wanted a wee bit of extra time because it was a pretty demanding tournament and we've afforded him that time. But we could do with him coming back over the weekend and he's been made aware of that so we're hoping to see him maybe on Sunday for training. It'll be like a new signing. He'll go straight into the squad anyway."
