44: Savo Milosevic, Aston Villa, Merlin’s Premier League 98 Official Sticker Collection

Nearly a quarter of a century ago The Guardian published an article entitled ‘The 10 Worst Foreign Signings in History’. Focusing almost exclusively on British football in the 1990s the list is hardly exhaustive and mentions many names that will not come as a shock to any football nostalgic or reader of these pages over the last three years. Serie A imports Tomas Brolin, Andrea Silenzi and Marco Negri featured with particular disdain reserved for the latter’s regular take home of £18,000 per week for contributing about as much as Winston Bogarde did for Chelsea which seems harsh for a man who actually lit up Ibrox with 23 goals in his first ten games. George Weah’s “cousin” (not his actual cousin) Ali Dia is of course included alongside Marco Boogers and Michele Padovano who managed just one goal in his twelve games for Crystal Palace and returned to the club a year after leaving demanding £1m in unpaid wages.

The common denominator between the article’s inhabitants was the positions of all those included. After all forwards are expected to contribute goals which, as Michael Owen so insightfully revealed to us all, tend to lead to you winning games. In the 1994/95 season Aston Villa had to wait until the last day to secure their Premier League status in part due to the serious injury suffered by John Fashanu, the relatively poor form in front of goal endured by Dwight Yorke and the fact that Nii Lamptey wasn’t quite as good as he appeared to be on Championship Manager. Brian Little strengthened his defence with the acquisition of Gareth Southgate and looked for goals from Leicester City’s Julian Joachim and Partizan Belgrade’s Savo Milosevic.

Milosevic had netted an impressive 79 goals in just 119 appearances at Partizan helping the club to two league championships and one Yugoslav Cup. His league debut for Villa saw him provide an assist for fellow new arrival Mark Draper and the Villans ran out 3-1 winners over Manchester United leading to Alan Hansen’s infamous “you can’t win anything with kids” comment. He netted his first goal for the club in his fifth game to secure a 1-1 draw with reigning champions Blackburn Rovers and by Christmas 1995 had eight goals to his name thanks to braces against Coventry City and West Ham United and a hat-trick against the former in the return fixture. The second goal against non-league Gravesend & Northfleet in the FA Cup Third Round started the New Year well but it wasn’t until March that Milosevic found the net again. This lapse in form was a gift for the tabloid press who duly dubbed the striker Savo Miss-a-lot-evic.

Milosevic hit another purple patch and scored the first goal in Villa’s 3-0 Coca-Cola Cup Final victory over Leeds United but the name stuck. Although he scored ten goals in the 1996/97 campaign as Villa finished fifth his barren spells caused frustration and did little to gain Milosevic the affection of the club’s fans. A less than convincing start to the 1997/98 season for both player and club came to a head during a 5-0 humbling at the hands of Blackburn Rovers when Milosevic spat at the Villa faithful and found himself on the transfer list by means of punishment. Having scored 33 goals in 117 appearances he moved to Real Zaragoza in July 1998 where his forty goals in just 79 games across two seasons suggested a return to the form which had brought him to Villa Park. He shared the Golden Boot with Patrick Kluivert at Euro 2000 as his five goals in four games for Yugoslavia contributed to thrilling contests with Slovenia and Spain and earned him a big money move to Parma.

Fifteen goals in fifty games was hardly the return expected from a €25m striker and Milosevic was loaned back to Zaragoza as well as Espanyol and Celta Vigo before a permanent move to Osasuna in 2004. In his second season he scored eleven times to help them qualify for the Champions League and, while the goals dried up in the 2006/07 campaign, he chipped in with vital assists to help the club to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup. In between this he earned his hundredth international cap at the 2006 World Cup, albeit in a 6-0 humiliation at the hands of Argentina, When his Osasuna contract expired he took a six month break from football before agreeing terms with Russian side Rubin Kazan for the 2008 season. He managed three goals in seventeen appearances but the last of these secured the side their first ever national championship. After two goals, and two missed penalties, in an invitational friendly between Serbia and Bulgaria he called time on his playing career.

Savo Milosevic scored 226 goals in 588 club appearances as well as 37 goals in 102 international games. This is hardly the record of one of the ten worst foreign signings in British football and not necessarily one that deserved the nickname for which he is best remembered on these shores. Milosevic could be lethal on his day for sure but his tendency for anonymity in between his purple patches frustrated Villa’s fans. Perhaps too much was expected of a young man far from home during a bloody civil war. That being said when has such context ever stood in the way of a half decent pun and the tabloid press?