Next up: Ansaldi?

Having made our first purchase of the Mancini era (albeit on loan), it looks like we could be close to making our second: Rubin Kazan's Cristian Ansaldi.

This has been run in the News of the World a few times, but yesterday it was mentioned in Russian newspaper Sport Express, where an article claimed that a £6m fee had been agreed between MCFC and Rubin Kazan. 'Window Watch' in The Times this morning said that we were 'on the verge' of a £4m deal. It's difficult to know where to separate genuine reporting from the echo chamber effect that defines so many transfer rumours in the press.

And it's particularly difficult because we were first linked to Ansaldi when Hughes was still in charge. Of course it's possible that he's a favourite of both Hughes and Mancini, but it's more likely - presuming, that is, that the rumours are true - that Football Administration Officer Brian Marwood is leading the line on this one. We could even be heading for a repeat of the Jô farce: a City manager sees a South American player in the Russian Premier League that he likes, he suggests that the owner buys said player, the owner sacks the manager but then buys the player anyway, as a welcoming gift for the new boss. Given how well this model of doing tranfers worked in summer 2008, we may as well give it another shot.

While I have no idea whether we will buy Ansaldi or not, I did some research on him as a player. FourFourTwo magazine has a section reporting on football from the former Soviet Union called Never Mind the Bolsheviks. On Twitter, I asked their eastern bloc football expert about Ansaldi and he replied:

He’s a solid left-back with good pace who likes to get forward & support the attack. Ansaldi can also operate as a winger.

Sounds ok. Not sure if we need four left backs though.