Sir Alex Ferguson Says He is Confident Carlos Tevez Will Sign for Manchester United

Sir Alex Ferguson is confident £30m target Carlos Tevez will eventually end up at Manchester United.

Tevez is currently at the centre of a major transfer wrangle with present club West Ham and the Premier League refusing to sanction a move to Old Trafford even though terms have been agreed with the player's agent, Kia Joorabchian. But Ferguson says it is only a matter of time before Tevez signs.

"I am sure the outcome will be that we will be taking him," Ferguson said today. "I thought it was going to be done by last weekend. Everything seemed perfectly okay, so the hold-up must be with the Premier League."

Having only allowed Tevez to play in the final three games of last season because a so-called 'third-party agreement' between West Ham and Joorabchian had been ripped up, the Premier League are anxious the Hammers should be the main financial beneficiaries of any move. However, Joorabchian is adamant Tevez remains his property and any financial windfall should come to him.

United legal expert Maurice Watkins has been left to find a solution to the impasse. The Red Devils are confident a compromise can be reached by the time Tevez's current commitments with Argentina at the Copa America are concluded at the weekend.

United are at a loss to understand why the Tevez move has stalled given the contract drawn up is almost exactly the same as the one which enabled Javier Mascherano to move from West Ham to Liverpool in January. The Premier League's argument is that since Mascherano's Upton Park exit, an independent commission has ruled the Argentina pair's Hammers' contracts were in breach of regulations.

To acknowledge now that Joorabchian still controls the player's future would involve a major climbdown. The matter could yet end up in the courts, or require the involvement of Fifa, though Ferguson insists United will not submit to anything 'underhand'.

"We are following the procedure of Javier Mascherano," he said. "The essential thing for us is that everything is agreed. We want complete clarity in the deal, with no suspicions or anything dodgy. There is no way we will be involved in anything underhand."