Liverpool and Newcastle seek summer buys

Liverpool and Newcastle United have both pledged to carry on investing heavily in new players during the summer, despite the difficult financial conditions in the Premiership.

Newcastle have already qualified for next season's Champions' League. Liverpool's participation in Europe's most lucrative club competition rests on the outcome of their final Premiership match at Chelsea on Sunday, but the Anfield chief executive, Rick Parry, said yesterday that there will be money made available to Liverpool's manager, Gérard Houllier, to spend on his squad this summer.

"We have got a shortlist of players – it is quite a long shortlist at the moment – and it is something we're working on all the time," Parry said. "I'm reasonably hopeful that the sort of players we will be bringing in will please the fans and have them on the edge of their seats. We want them to be players who will make a significant improvement."

Liverpool have been linked with a host of players, but the prime targets are believed to be Blackburn's Damien Duff, the Fulham pair of Steve Finnan and Steed Malbranque, and Jean-Alain Boumsong and Djibril Cissé, both of Auxerre.

One player who will not be moving to Anfield in the immediate future is the Sheffield United midfielder Michael Tonge. The 20-year-old apparently impressed Houllier when the sides met in the Worthington Cup earlier this season, but he has ended speculation regarding his future by signing a one-year extension to his current contract, keeping him at Bramall Lane until 2006.

Parry, speaking in a fans' internet question-and-answer forum, said that qualification for the Champions' League was not a prerequisite to team strengthening in the summer.

"It will be a disappointment and a blow if we are not in the Champions' League but it wouldn't be fatal and we would bounce back," he said. "Money is tight in the game at the moment but we haven't overstretched ourselves."

Houllier could be without two key players on Sunday for the match at Stamford Bridge, which Liverpool must win if they are to finish in the top four..

Vladimir Smicer is almost certainly out with a calf injury which kept him on the sidelines for the weekend defeat by Manchester City, while Dietmar Hamann is undergoing intense treatment on a shin injury.

Houllier said: "Hamann is a major doubt at this stage. He hasn't been able to train since the City game and he'll be receiving more treatment. We want to give him every chance.

"We missed Vladimir against Manchester City. He's a player who could have made a difference and has done particularly well coming off the bench."

Newcastle supporters, meanwhile, can look forward to the imminent arrival of "more top-class players", according to the club's chairman, Freddy Shepherd.

"We've signed Hugo Viana, Jonathan Woodgate and Laurent Robert in the last two years and there will be more top-class players coming here," Shepherd said. "Any player worth his salt would want to join Newcastle and I'm talking about players across Europe. We've got a fine reputation now.

"We won't panic in the transfer market and we won't gamble either. There's no need. It's all about topping and tailing a quality squad.

Newcastle's policy of buying highly rated youngsters such as Jermaine Jenas would also be maintained, Shepherd said. "The whole structure of this club is geared to bringing in quality young players. I heard [the Newcastle manager] Bobby Robson talking about recruiting older ones for the short term and, while we'd never close that avenue, we're building for the long term.

"Ideally we want quality youngsters who are ready now but who are also going to get even better. We have sat down with Bobby and identified possible targets and we'll sit down again soon to discuss them further."

* The crucial final-day battles at the top and bottom of the Premiership will be televised live by Sky Sports, with three games being shown simultaneously. West Ham's trip to Birmingham, Bolton's home game against Middlesbrough and Liverpool's Champions League' decider at Chelsea will receive live coverage on Sunday.