City rumour backed up by actual quotation shock

We can't buy players for at least another three months, but we're already in an absurd rumour frenzy (this is my fourth post on summer transfers in the last five days). Today, however, we have been blessed with an actual quotation from a named person in support of a pre-existing rumour.

Last week The Mirror published a story about Barcelona's young forward Giovani dos Santos. It was no more worthy of whichever reward we give (attention? consideration?) to rumours which cross some threshold of plausibility than any other. Pretty unrealistic, without any factual foundation and focussed on a player sufficiently out of the public eye not even to merit a denial on Sky Sports News.

This all changed today, however, when dos Santos' father, Zizinho, mentioned that we are interested in Giovani. He told Mexican newspaper El Universal that: "There is interest from Manchester City, however, I cannot give more information now as Giovani's agent is the one in charge of all this, it's him who is dealing with negotiations. I can't say for sure if Giovani will go to another team. There are still games to play in La Liga and while there are he's only thinking about Barcelona. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, there is interest but first he has to concentrate on Barcelona."

Very promising. The agent mentioned is Pini Zahavi, who is apparently close to SGE and has been trying to hawk dos Santos around for a while.

So where would he fit with our transfer policy? He doesn't quite have the sufficient profile to be The Big Name Buy we've been talking about this week. Nor is he an experienced and prolific goal scorer. I was at Camp Nou for his Champions' League debut last September, and have seen him on Sky a few times. He's not even a centre forward - he plays out wide in Barcelona's traditional 4-3-3. He's very quick and two footed - probably more dangerous in the channels than as a Petrovian winger. Rather than being our Berbatov or Torres, he's more of a 'Sven signing' - an exotic and talented foreign youngster, in the mould of Gelson, Caicedo, Garrido or Corluka. dos Santos is only three months older than Daniel Sturridge. So as exciting as he would certainly be, he would have to be bought as well as, rather than instead of, the experienced striker we're looking for.