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Anzhi themselves have tended to play either 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 this season (with Roberto Carlos usually employed as a holding midfielder, the waning of his pace having made impossible his surges from full-back). Eto'o naturally fits into either system, whether as a centre-forward or wide, and similarly Alexander Prudnikov, the much-travelled 22-year-old forward could move wide if required. When Eto'o has been ineffective for Cameroon, it tends to have been when he has dropped deep in search of the ball, only to find a lack of passing options; at Anzhi, with the likes of Roberto Carlos, the former Chelsea midfielder Yuri Zhirkov, the former PSV midfielder Balazs Dzsudzsak and the Moroccan Mbark Boussoufa, there should be enough quality to allow him to play as an out-and-out front man.

The irony of that is that Kerimov's motives in buying the club are to tackle precisely that kind of prejudice. With a fortune of around £4.7bn, according to Forbes, he is ranked as the 118th richest man in the world, and had invested around £80m in the club this year even before the Eto'o deal. The question, as always, is why? Perhaps it is merely local pride; after all, Kerimov was born in Derbent in Dagestan, and studied accounting and economics at Dagestan State University.