By Ben Sutherland BBC Sport Online

The queues are getting longer at the Premiership branch of African-Footballers-R-Us.

Over half of the English top flight's 20 teams have either bought or been linked with some of the cream of Africa's talent, including virtually all of Senegal's World Cup squad that reached the quarter-finals.

But there are some bosses who seem to be concentrating almost all their summer spending on Africans.

Heading the line for the checkout is Birmingham City manager Steve Bruce.

Pre-emptive deals

Having now completed the signing of Senegal captain Aliou Cisse, Bruce is also hopeful of stuffing both Inter Milan's Sierra Leonean striker Mohammed Kallon and Nigeria-born Emmanuel Olisadebe into his trolley.

"Since he has gone into the World Cup he has gone through the roof," Bruce said of Cisse.

"As soon as I saw him play against the French in the first game we made our move."

Someone who moved even quicker than that was Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier.

Having already singled Senegal out as the team to watch in an interview with BBC Sport Online, Houllier made pre-empitive deals to bring both striker El Hadji Diouf and midfielder Salif Diao to Anfield.

Diouf went on to be named as one of the top ten players at the tournament.

Both the Senegalese will be hoping to have a better time than most Africans have on Merseyside so far.

Failures

Liverpool expected great things of Cameroonian centre-back Rigobert Song, but he was never able to hold down a place and was quickly shipped off to West Ham.

Meanwhile across the city's Stanley Park, at Everton, Africans have fared even worse.

Nigerian Daniel Amokachi may have had been able to outrun a lightening-painted Ferrari, but all it meant was aching arms for linesmen as he secured the largest collection of red and yellow flags since the Spanish Armarda.

And Ghanaian Alex Nyarko's somewhat anonymous displays prompted a lot of headscratching after a fan ran onto the pitch shouting at him - more people recognised the fan than the player.

This has not deterred new boss David Moyes, however, who is keen to sign centre-back Joseph Yobo, "probably the best player from Nigeria."

Attention

Yobo, incidentally, was the defensive partner of Taribo West at the World Cup - and West is seemingly headed for Bolton, where he will join another compatriot, playmaker Jay Jay Okocha.