BOLTON want to sign bad boy El-Hadji Diouf on a full transfer from Liverpool when his loan runs out at the end of the season.

The controversial Senegalese striker, 23, is having a superb on-field season and has played a key role in the club's move to the brink of qualifying for Europe.

But it has been marred by the second spitting incident to scar his career. Diouf was banned for three games and fined heavily for a moment of madness involving Portsmouth's Arjan de Zeeuw in November.

Bolton are hoping he will grow out of the problems which have made him Public Enemy No 1 in the Premiership and they are ready to back that hope with hard cash.

Liverpool paid '10m for him to Auxerre but he never reproduced his 2002 World Cup form at Anfield and they let him join Wanderers on a season's loan last summer.

Reebok chairman Phil Gartside told M.E.N. Sport last night: "We are certainly going to try to keep him here next season.

"I think he wants to stay and we want him. It's a question of trying to get the right financial deal with Liverpool.

"It's not so much a matter of reaching agreement with Diouf as Liverpool. We know what his aspirations are. He might not get exactly what he wants but we know where we are going.

"But we need to do a deal which will suit both clubs and we will try to do that this summer. When we took him on loan we talked about the possibility of keeping him."

Re- born

Bolton will be sweating over Diouf's success at the Reebok. The better he performs, the higher his price and the further he will test the range of Bolton's budget.

The club's fear now is that others will be kindling an interest in the re-born player because, good boy or bad, he has proved that he can play.

Gartside added: "There's always a danger of someone else coming in. He hadn't been very successful in English football but we have tried to revive his career. Hopefully, we will benefit from the situation where he improves with us.

"If he hadn't been successful with us, we wouldn't be wanting to buy him.

"I remember when we signed David Lee from Southampton. We couldn't afford '100,000 but we had to because he was so successful and Diouf is almost giving us that sort of problem.

"He's not the easiest of players to understand and manage. People are not only going to look at his success with us but at the lad himself and see that he attracts the wrong kind of publicity. There's no way anyone is going to pay '10m.

"But we have seen him week in, week out and he's a tremendous player. He gets frustrated, he gets hammered and referees don't protect him and players give him a lot of stick.

"He reacts with frustration. He's not malicious and we've got to hope that as a 23-year-old he grows out of it."

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