ITALIAN star Gianfranco Zola is set to become Ruud Gullit's fourth major overseas signing after Chelsea agreed a club record fee of £5 million with Serie A side Parma.

Parma sources said last night that the two clubs had reached agreement on a price for the 30 year old former Napoli striker.

Zola will pick up around £25,000 per week over the course of his four year contract with the Stamford Bridge side, which will see him link up with compatriots Gianluca Vialli and Roberto di Matteo and Frenchman Frank Leboeuf.

As part of the agreement, the Italian club said, the clubs will meet twice in friendly matches, the first on November 27th and the return next July.

Chelsea's managing director, Colin Hutchinson, flew to Italy yesterday to finalise the deal with the former Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup winners.

Although the decal has been struck between the clubs, Zola himself has yet to sign, although a Parma spokesman said last night: "We anticipate that he will be doing so in the next few hours."

The signing is another massive coup for Gullit, who broke the previous transfer record when he paid £4.9 million to bring Di Matteo from Lazio in the summer.

While Zola may be best known for two moments he will want to forget - the red card against Nigeria in the 1994 World Cup and last summer's Euro 96 penalty miss against Germany - he is regarded as a lynchpin bf the Italian national side.

Zola's departure to join the Serie A exodus to the Premiership comes after three months in which he has fallen out with new Parma coach Carlo Ancelotti.

The Sardinian born Zola has been forced to play in a deeplying role behind Italian international Enrico Chiesa and Argentinian Hernan Crespo and has not hid his unhappiness.

Meanwhile, Liverpool's patience with Stan Collymore finally ran out yesterday when they disciplined the errant England international forward for refusing to play in a reserve team game.

Collymore was fined at least one - and quite possibly two weeks wages and warned about his future conduct after he failed to turn up for a reserve team match against Tranmere Rovers on Wednesday night.

With an estimated basic annual income of around £780,000, Collymore's latest indiscretion will cost him at last £15,000 - or double that amount should Liverpool decide to impose the maximum available penalty of a fortnight's loss of earnings.

The task of announcing yesterday's decision fell to Liverpool manager Roy Evans, the man who bought Collymore from Nottingham Forest for a then British transfer record fee of £8.5 million and the man who, in the past, has moved heaven and earth to defend Anfield's enfant terrible.

"Stan Collymore was selected for the reserve team at Tranmere Rovers on Wednesday," said Evans, "he told us in the morning that he didn't want to play and he failed to turn up for the game. We will be taking appropriate disciplinary action.

Yesterday's developments will undoubtedly come to represent a defining moment in Collymore's Liverpool career, a career which may now have months, rather than years, left to run.

The decision to take meaningful disciplinary action was made late on Wednesday night and Collymore was informed when, perhaps surprisingly, he reported for training at 10 a.m. yesterday morning. Although this is the first time Collymore has been fined since his arrival at Liverpool 15 months ago, his working relationship with both his manager and his team mates has, to say the very least, been strained over the past year.

Last season, after losing his regular first team place, he was reprimanded for comments he made in a magazine article and recently he was told he must relocate in the north west after experiencing trouble in travelling to Merseyside from his home in the midlands.

Liverpool reserves are scheduled to play Sheffield Wednesday at Anfield tomorrow. A second refusal to play will almost certainly result in Collymore's immediate suspension.

Ideally, Liverpool would now like to offload a player who is perceived to be tarnishing the club's reputation. The problem is, after investing so heavily in him, Liverpool would require an offer of around £6 million before they would consider sanctioning his departure.