KEVIN Keegan wants Blackburn Rovers central defender Chris Coleman to join the Fulham bandwagon, now starting to roll thanks to the Mohammed Al Fayed millions.

But personal terms could stand in the way of a potential £2 million-plus transfer for the Welsh international.

Both Rovers and Fulham have confirmed the interest, with the Second Division club continuing to build a side to challenge for promotion this season by recruiting players with the experience and quality of higher divisions.

Ewood chief executive John Williams said today: "Yes, they have made an inquiry and it's in the player's court now. But it hasn't gone any further than that."

Fulham team manager Ray Wilkins admitted the London club had been hopeful initially that a deal could have been wrapped up quickly. But he added that meeting the personal terms of the player were the stumbling block.

Their interest is certainly not dead but it looks as though there might have to be come hard bargaining if anything is to develop.

Coleman, who has fought back well from a year's absence after rupturing his Achilles tendon, cannot find a place in the Rovers side at the moment. It would seem that there are three or four players ahead of him for one of the two berths in the centre of defence. He has proved his fitness, however, by playing for Rovers in the Coca-Cola Cup and also for Wales in their recent international against Brazil.

After joining Rovers from Crystal Palace for £2.8 million in December 1995, Coleman had a regular place in the team until the long-term injury put paid to that.

Meanwhile, manager Roy Hodgson took the club's latest excellent result against Chelsea in his stride.

And both he and his players are refusing to get carried away with talk of titles, despite the climb to second place which adds even more spice to Sunday's Old Trafford clash with Manchester United.

But Hodgson, while understandably avoiding a direct answer, clearly does believe there are the ingredients for a genuine challenge at Ewood.

"You need players who are hungry," he said. "And the the likes of Flowers, Hendry, Sherwood, Sutton, Ripley etc are hungry. "To win the championship again would prove to people that they were not a one-season wonder and also that they were not a one-man team," he added with an obvious reference to Alan Shearer.

Hodgson knows what it means to win a title twice, as he did it first with Halmstad in Sweden in 1976 and pointed out that the second time three years later was even more satisfying.

Matchwinner Gary Croft, celebrating his first-ever Rovers goal with a superb strike, said: "We are not thinking about titles, we are just thinking about the next game against Manchester United."

Two goals from Paddy Connolly and one from Luke Staton gave Rovers A team a 3-1 win over Liverpool. The B team won 2-1 at Stockport with a couple of goals from Gary Hamilton.

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