IT might not have been the club everyone expected but Michael Ricketts got what he wanted on Friday - a move away from Bolton Wanderers.

The Reebok top scorer drove out of the Euxton training ground at lunchtime and headed for Teesside after Middlesbrough boss Steve McClaren succeeded where Spurs had failed in meeting Wanderers' asking price.

At £3.5 million, with a significant sell-on clause, it was some way short of the £6m chairman Phil Gartside has been quoting as the club's valuation of the player they signed from Walsall for a bargain £400,000 two and a half years ago.

The Saddlers will take a cut of the profit as a result of negotiating their own sell-on clause when that July 2000 deal was struck but Wanderers appear to have done well to bank as much as they have for an unsettled striker who has not been at the peak of his form this season.

Bolton fans will be forever in Ricketts' debt after he got the goals that fired their team into the Premiership and kept them there. But his scoring record and his form since he won his one and only England cap in Holland last February has been less than impressive.

After scoring one of his more memorable goals in the FA Cup win at Stockport last January - embarrassing County player-manager Carlton Palmer in the process - Ricketts went the rest of the season without scoring and, apart from three penalties this season, has only scored four goals from open play in the last 12 months.

Nevertheless, he remained relatively hot property in a depressed transfer market.

Spurs desperately wanted him but struggled to match Wanderers' asking price - not just once but twice - angering Allardyce and Gartside along the way with their tactics and "derisory" offers.

The manager accused Spurs of unsettling their man last summer when they tried to get him on the cheap before the August transfer deadline, only to switch to Leeds' Republic of Ireland striker Robbie Keane at the 11th hour. And it was only a fortnight ago, when Hoddle tried to broker a deal with player-plus-cash exchanges, that the chairman spoke of "dirty tricks".

Allardyce reckoned Spurs were always serious about their interest in Ricketts but failed all along to come up with a bid Wanderers could seriously consider.

Boro came late but were able to offer a package that was more to his liking.

McClaren was known to be an admirer and saw Ricketts as a key figure in the squad of young British players he is hoping to put together after getting fingers burned with a number of recent foreign imports - the concensus at The Riverside being that Massimo Maccarone is an £8.1m flop while Carlos Marinelli, a £1.7m signed from Boca Juniors, was yesterday offloaded on loan to Italian club Torino.

But Boro did not appear to have the funds to back their manager, a theory that was supported when Allardyce spoke to McClaren earlier this week and established that there was unlikely to be a bid from Teesside.

Dramatically, as these things often do, all that changed on Friday morning when, despite widespread speculation that Spurs had finally come up with a bid that was more to Wanderers' liking, it became clear that Boro were the frontrunners.

Even then confusion reigned. Middlesbrough saw fit to announce on their official website that a fee had been agreed and that the player was on his way to The Riverside but Wanderers insisted that, as of 3.30pm, they had not received an offer!

Everything was resolved, however, and the deal went through just in time to beat the midnight transfer deadline - to the delight and, it must be said, the relief of all concerned.

Wanderers got good money for an unsettled player, Middlesbrough got their man and, although it was not the move he was said to have set his heart on, Ricketts got the new start he was hoping for when he put his transfer request in writing last week.