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Wesley Sneijder is a classic trequartista. To Sir Alex Ferguson this makes him both an incredibly attractive £35m target and a whole load of potential tactical trouble.

Trequartista, the Italian for three-quarters, has come to encapsulate an exquisite breed of footballer rarely found in England, whose natural habitat is the hole between central midfield and attack. Generally reliant on imagination and incision rather than speed and strength, these quintessential No10s are not quite secondary strikers but rather attacking playmakers occupying advanced, as opposed to deep-lying, roles.

Herein lies Manchester United's dilemma and, just possibly, explains why Ferguson has distanced himself from reports he was poised to sign the Dutch international from Internazionale.

Other disincentives include Sneijder's £190,000-a-week wages and the fact that he does not fit into United's policy of buying players aged 26 and under. Although such managerial denials could very easily be part of a smokescreen, Ferguson famously declined a chance to acquire Zinedine Zidane – a not entirely dissimilar player – from Bordeaux because he was unsure where he would fit into his side.

Since then United's manager has largely abandoned a 4-4-2 framework for more sophisticated configurations but unless Sneijder were deployed in a less influential, deeper-lying role, doing business with Inter would inevitably prompt a tricky recalibration of United's attacking assets.

If it is easy to envisage him at the apex of the diamond formation regularly deployed by Chelsea in recent seasons, no one seems sure whether accommodating his special talents at Old Trafford would prove destabilising or the key to competing more equally with Barcelona.

Although there appears a danger of provoking a considerable traffic jam in the area behind Javier Hernández, which would surely have Sneijder occupying space frequently coveted by Wayne Rooney (as well as by Ashley Young and Dimitar Berbatov), the alternative view is that United's skill at fluid positional interchanging should harness this apparent surfeit of creative attacking talent to devastating effect.

After all, when Vicente del Bosque memorably described United's manager as "a tactical anarchist", the former Real Madrid manager was complimenting Ferguson on his ability to defy football's unwritten geometrical conventions.

Paul Scholes, into whose newly retired boots Sneijder would, loosely, be stepping, evidently believes that the 27-year-old former Real and Ajax set-piece specialist is the right man to raise United's game towards Catalan heights.

Only last week United's latest coaching recruit was asked about the competing claims of Ferguson's principal midfield interests, Sneijder, Luka Modric and Samir Nasri. Scholes's reply proved instructive. "We've been linked with top players," he said. "Especially Sneijder, who has done it at World Cups as well."

All three are visionary distributors adept at unpicking the meanest defences and seeing their clever, goal-conjuring passes bypass the congestion promoted by spoiling midfield quintets. Ferguson has long had quite a crush on the deeper-sitting Modric but it seems Tottenham Hotspur's prize possession has his heart set on a switch to Chelsea. The Scot also admires Arsenal's Nasri but Scholes is not alone in suggesting that Sneijder, as the sole natural No10 among that trio, is the most extravagantly gifted.

Two-footed and with his balance boosted by a low centre of gravity allied to the upper body strength required to shrug off markers in the tightest of spots, Sneijder, who speaks impeccable English, can operate deeper in midfield and has done so. Yet if such positioning shows off his passing range to dazzling effect, Sneijder's best displays for Holland and Inter have come from a secure platform in front of two holding midfielders.

With United having failed to replace Roy Keane in the enforcement department, a role closer to Rio Ferdinand and company could only expose Sneijder's defensive vulnerabilities. Ironically that would represent a reversal of the situation a decade ago when Ferguson's recruitment of the deep-lying playmaker Juan Sebastián Verón failed partly because he fielded the Argentinian too high up the pitch.

The teenage Sneijder learnt to play several positions, most notably left-winger and full-back, but has been most imperious when deployed à la his natural Ajax predecessors Dennis Bergkamp and, even more pertinently, Jari Litmanen. More technically precise and prone to greater invention, if considerably less energetic, than Steven Gerrard, he is, like his Liverpool counterpart, highly versatile but happiest in the hole.

Quite where his mooted Mancunian advent might leave Rooney is anyone's guess. Not that football's celebrity watchers care. They are simply praying Sneijder's second wife, Yolanthe Cabau van Kasbergen – described as a Dutch amalgam of Jordan, Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham – is Cheshire-bound.