Toon target Auxerre midfielder Alain Traoré (+ video)
Posted on November 15th, 2011 | 9 Comments |
To add to the transfer rumours I posted yesterday, there are additional rumours that we’re in hot pursuit of Auxerre midfielder Alain Traoré.
The Daily Mail claims that the 22 year-old has 6 goals in 12 games this season and, as far as I can gather, 13 goals in 47 senior matches for his career. He also has 7 goals in 15 games for Burkina Faso, which is where he is from.
I wasn’t sure where Burkina Faso was in Africa, so I looked it up: it’s on the Western sticky-out bit of Northern Africa but is away from the coast and land-locked by six countries (Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and the Ivory Coast). Ouagadougou is the capital.
The Mail suggests that he might struggle to get a work permit though. Apparently this was a problem Manchester United had with the player when they were considering signing him 5 years ago. They wanted him to go to Royal Antwerp, their nursery club, but he was offered a contract by Auxerre and went there instead.
He seems to be billed as a left-sided winger by a lot of the press but was playing as a central attacking midfielder in Auxerre’s 4-2-3-1 formation last season and I think that’s the role we’d be looking to use him in, if of course this is any more than a rumour in the first place.
I have no idea what sort of price we’d be talking but I can’t imagine it would be too high as it’s only recently that he’s really started to attract attention (as far as I can gather anyway). The ‘Transfermarkt’ site has him valued at €2m, although I reckon that might be on the low side. He fits the profile for the sort of player we go after anyway: young, French-speaking and probably not too expensive.
Anyway, I found a video of him in action (which was tricky as there isn’t much). He scores the second and third goals from this clip:
Again though, it’s only press speculation that says we have any interest in him. Having said that, he does seem like the sort of player we’d go after.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
Looks a bang on cert to me especially as we all know and agree that what we actually need is at least one quick striker and cover in defence.