The Derby manager Jim Smith answered the phone a few days after signing the Georgian international Georgi Kinkladze from Ajax and was surprised to hear the voice of the former Manchester City chairman Franny Lee.

An excited Lee just wanted to tell Smith that he had signed one of the greatest players in the world. It was one of dozens of good-luck messages to arrive at Derby from approving and green-eyed City fans.

Kinkladze achieved cult-hero status in his first season at Maine Road, 1995-96, remarkably so given that he was a member of a team that provided reams of material for stand-up comics as they were relegated from the Premiership under Alan Ball. When he was sold to Ajax for a City-record fee of Stg£4,925,000 last year, club officials who loved him were crying all the way to the bank.

Smith could have saved himself a lot of bother by putting in a call to Lee or the City supporters' club six months ago when an agent friend started pestering him about Kinkladze. Instead, Smith admits, "I didn't want to know because I was getting the wrong vibes from Amsterdam. I was told he'd put on a lot of weight and didn't have the right attitude." A manager with a side struggling at the wrong end of the Premiership needs a player like that like he needs Stan Collymore.

Over the next few months, however, Smith heard nothing but good about Kinkladze, although the best action on the video sent by his agent to prove the player's form was of Kinky, in Man City colours, turning Newcastle's John Beresford and Steve Howey inside out: hardly conclusive evidence of his talents.

Smith, however, was finally won over when he met the midfielder. Having been led to believe he would be taking on someone the size of Tomas Brolin, he was pleased to find someone more the shape of Posh Spice. Kinkladze followed their meeting with a few tricks on the training pitch, which convinced Smith he had nothing to lose by taking over the Georgian's contract until the end of the season.

"Some of the stuff he does in training really excites you," Smith says, "and his quality of delivery is fantastic. He only played for 20 minutes at Arsenal last Sunday but he showed a little bit of magic. I just can't wait to get him fully fit and see what he can really do."

Kinkladze (26), who is likely to start his first game for Derby against Leeds tomorrow, admits it will take four or five games to readjust to the pace of Premiership, or any other football come to that, after scarcely kicking a ball for six months. His dream move to Ajax turned into a nightmare when Jan Wouters took over as the manager soon after his arrival and asked him to play on the left wing.

"I tried, I tried," he insists, "but it is not my position. In the past 18 months I have played only about 20 league games and a couple of internationals. When I was a boy I supported Ajax so it was a dream move for me. But everything went wrong and now I don't support them any more."

It was such a depressing time for Kinkladze that he found himself dreaming of being back in the sky blue of Manchester City, which few other former players of recent vintage would admit to. But then when Kinkladze first left Tbilisi he signed for City in preference to Boca Juniors of Argentina and Real Madrid.

When he arrived in Manchester it was said that his only knowledge of English was the phrase "give me the ball", not a common one in the dressingroom at the time. And he was so homesick that his mother flew in with a sack of his favourite walnuts and hot spices; she also forbade City fans to call him Kinky after Lee helpfully explained the word's sexual connotations.

With a Mancunian girlfriend of two years' standing, Kinkladze has not brought his interpreter or his mother this time. He has, in any case, always been a man who prefers to let his boots do his talking, and as they have such an expressive and colourful vocabulary, why not?

"This is a big moment in my life because I always dreamed of coming back to play in England," he says. "I think for me it is the best league in the world because of the pace of the game, the quality of the play and the excitement of watching it. But there are a lot more foreign players here now."

With players such as Beresford and Howey still around to fall for his trickery, you can see the appeal of the Premiership for Kinkladze, who will be given free rein by Smith to run at and dribble past such defenders to provide more magical video moments.

"I wasn't worried about Derby's position in the table," Kinkladze says, "because you can see they have good-quality players and a good manager. I think things are going to be OK and if I can play well I hope to sign permanently at the end of the season."

In theory, Derby could lose their place in the Premiership to Manchester City. But he believes that, realistically, Derby will survive, City will come up and he can return to play against his old team next season. If one were to seek the opinion of a former Manchester City chairman, he would no doubt say the same.