FOOTBALL is hardly an exact science so every transfer carries with it an element of risk.

The trick as a manager is to get more right than you do wrong and in Graeme Souness's case, you have to say his record holds up favourably during his time at Ewood.

Of course there's always going to be one or two signings which don't quite come off, but then show me one manager who can boast a 100 per cent success rate in the market place.

Even Sir Alex Ferguson bought his fair share of duffers during the Danny Wallace and Terry Gibson era before finally arriving at the squad he has now, so no-one out there is immune to criticism.

But the reason I'm making this point now is Souness appears to have plucked a gem from the coal-pile once again in the shape of talismanic Turk Hakan Sukur.

Already, during his three-year tenure at Ewood, the shrewd Scot's eye for a bargain has resulted in the recruitment of Tugay, Brad Friedel, Lucas Neill and David Thompson, all bought for a combined total of just £3.5 million.

Now the question on everybody's lips is 'Can Sukur make a similar impact next season?'

The evidence presented on Monday night would suggest he can.

Two flashes of world-class finishing at Loftus Road underlined exactly why Souness was so keen to bring 'the bull of Bosphorus' to England last December.

It wasn't so much the fact they were his first goals in England, it was more the manner of their execution which led me to believe that the 31-year-old could turn out to be one of the signings of the summer.

Of course it's far too early to get carried away yet, but it takes a special kind of player to score goals like that.

I've spent the last 24 hours racking my brains trying to think of a Rovers striker from the modern era capable of conjuring that type of goal and I have to admit no obvious candidate springs to mind.

Alan Shearer and Simon Garner were different kinds of strikers altogether, while Matt Jansen has never considered himself to be a natural-born-finisher, despite his success in that area during recent seasons.

So the clamour to sign Sukur permanently will only intensify between now and the end of the season as long as he continues to produce the goods like he did in the capital.

Question marks still remain over his fitness, of course, and Souness will use the next six games to assess how well he's recovered from a broken leg and a double hernia.

But one glance at his goalscoring record, both in the Champions League and at international level, would suggest that Rovers are in possession of a diamond, and Souness is the man to restore its sparkle.