Sergei Rebrov

Spurs, not surprisingly given their recent problems with injuries to key players and the collapse of the John Hartson transfer, were anxious. And, of course, there was Ruud van Nistelrooy, whose £18m move to Manchester United collapsed because of a similar injury.

So when Jonathan Barnett, the football agent at the centre of the deal, arrived in Kiev, he needed to know that state of the troublesome joint.  To counter any foreseeable problems, Barnett requested and was shown, the player’s full medical history which was kept at a hotel complex near the club’s training headquarters.  Unlike English clubs, Kiev’s players are given medicals virtually on a daily basis and their weight and general health monitored constantly.

Barnett said: “I saw his knee was 100 per cent perfect for myself. At Kiev they basically get a medical every day because they are very into monitoring the players’ well-being.

“They can tell you at any stage what his pulse rate is and how much he weighs because they are weighed before and after every training session. I was very careful to have a look at his medical records and as soon as I saw them, I knew there would not be a hitch from that point of view.”

As Standard Sport exclusively revealed in March, George Graham had identified Rebrov as his main summer target when he watched Kiev’s Champions League game against Rosenborg. The club’s Director of Football, David Pleat, then began the process of bringing the striker to White Hart Lane.  But it wasn’t until the end of April, after receiving encouragement from the Ukraine, that Pleat and Barnett flew to Kiev to meet officials from the club.

In the meantime Barnett had been working to establish whether or not Kiev were genuinely interested in selling the player.

“I received a positive response from them but people have a misconception about Kiev being a selling club,” he said. “They have sold only four or five players in the last five years and are a rich club.

“The players are paid very well and the training facilities are just as good as any of the top clubs in England. They even have a hotel where the players can stay during the week while they are training. The first hurdle was persuading them to sell for the right price.”

Barnett and Pleat landed in Kiev for two days of talks with club officials. Over lunch and dinner on the first day, the discussions were amicable and forthcoming until the conversation drifted on to the subject of the price.  Tottenham’s £10m offer was, as it turned out, well below Kiev’s valuation of a player who had become a hero for his club and country.

Barnett said: “Things went well while we were out there but the sticking point was £12m. They would not budge from that but they did allow us to speak to the player. That was a crucial factor because Rebrov, who can speak fluent English, is articulate, very intelligent and wanted to come to England.

“Despite apparent interest from clubs in Europe, Rebrov was impressed that Spurs had made the effort to fly to Kiev to sound him out and, more importantly, he got on with Pleat.  Without David’s enthusiasm and involvement, I doubt the deal would have gone through. Furthermore, when we went back to the club before flying home, the Kiev president told us that he would do everything he could to help Rebrov get his wish to go to Spurs, because the player had been so loyal.”

Barnett and Pleat flew back into London to begin the process of persuading Spurs chairman Sir Alan Sugar that the Rebrov deal was there for the taking, but an increase in the price would almost certainly have to be considered.  Sugar was enthusiastic about the prospect of signing the striker but not so happy about the £12m Kiev were demanding. The renegotiation process began 24 hours after the pair returned home.  That involved numerous faxes to Kiev over a period of days and eventually, after endless hours of communications, the deal was concluded by way of a compromise.

Barnett said: “I put it down to good negotiation and a lot of goodwill from the player. In the end, the price was settled at £11m and all that was left was for the player to come to England for a medical.”

That happened on Monday when Rebrov flew to London for further talks over his personal terms but he was not a Spurs player officially until Kiev sent a final fax in the evening.  That cleared the way for Rebrov to sign after passing his medical on Tuesday.

Sergei Rebrov’s recent revelation that the death of his former Dynamo Kiev manager Valeriy Lobanovsky brought him great sadness may tell us more about the reason he has not reproduced his Champions League form at Tottenham than at first it appears.

Rebrov will, no doubt, be one of the players who leaves the club without fulfilling his potential.  Having become the highest scorer in the premier European competition in his time at the perennial Ukrainian champions, he has fallen from grace with a resounding bump.  His feted move to Tottenham for a club record £11 million was to be the start of Spurs’ resurrection.  However, in two seasons he is now little more than a part time player, producing cameo roles that are a sad silhouette of his striking self.

The one thing that Sergei stated on Lobanovsky’s passing was that he taught him more about football than anyone else he had come across, so that must include Hoddle now.  The fact that he trained Dynamo Kiev in such a way that they were very successful at home and abroad meant that the system he played suited the little forward.  Goals smashed in from all angles were his trademark and alongside Andrei Shevchenko, he set up as many as he tucked away.  But away from his comfortable surroundings in the Kiev team, he has been unable to fit the teams he has played in at Tottenham.

The Kiev method involved rigid tactics and a regime that focused on fitness.  Sir Charles Hughes would have thought that he had found along lost son in Lobanovsky, as his scientific and statistical systems produced a high level of performance from his players, whoever they were.  The beauty was that new men could come in and fit the system automatically.  Initially, players might have found it strange as they were taken away from their home towns and put together with the other Kiev squad members.  The squad was based at a special centre for the club and extensive medical tests were carried out to ensure they were always at peak fitness.  The system of play was drilled into them to ensure that they would know exactly what would happen in any given situation.

Some players might have been able to adapt when they found themselves removed from the culture they were accustomed to.  Some might not.  Shevchenko has maintained a high scoring rate at AC Milan, while Rebrov has looked like a fish out of water.

That might be because the football in England is a lot different to that in Italy, but there should still have been glimmers of the style that brought him such a reputation that encouraged Tottenham to splash millions on him.  He has never looked happy playing the lone striker being up against hulking centre-halves, who are happy enough to kick him all afternoon.  He has rarely linked up well with any of the other forwards at Tottenham, making any impact only occasionally with Steffen Iversen, when he was free of injury.

Sergei did show a flash of his class, when he took the ball on the right of the box against Newcastle United at home in early 2001 and chipped it inch perfect into the far top corner of the net, leaving the keeper flapping at thin air.  Perhaps his best game was the FA Cup quarter final at Upton Park, when, in a torrential downpour, he scored twice to take Tottenham through to the Old Trafford semi-final against Arsenal, where he was pretty anonymous, in a poor team performance.  His body shape to give Tottenham a 2-1 lead in the 31st minute was superb, producing a volley that flew horizontally after it left his boot and left Hislop with no chance.

But these were few and far between.  I would hope that he might stay at White Hart Lane to show us what he is really capable of, but there is slim hope of that happening.  Hoddle has used him rarely, even from the bench and the five minute run-outs he gets here and there are no good for him or the club.  He has obviously lost confidence and appears to be heading out of the club with a price tag that has a large chunk reduced from the purchase fee.

It’s a shame that he didn’t fit in here, but maybe it was the system rather than anything else that made him fail to live up to the expectations.  May he find luck and form elsewhere (although not at our expense) and may his replacement fit in better (and hopefully the management will consider this).

Grayling Barraclough