Threat of Birmingham City missing out on Jovanovic

Nov 26 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

Our Man At The Blues will be live online at 12.30pm today for a live Q&A as you eat your sandwiches. Colin Tattum will be answering your questions on all things Blues for an hour. www.birminghammail.net/live

BLUES were today told they could be missing out on a star in Milan Jovanovic, the Standard Liege striker.

After reading the Birmingham Mail’s story on the saga yesterday, agent Barry McIntosh insisted that he had the “exclusive” mandate to get Liege a deal.

And he claimed he had done Blues a good turn by agreeing a transfer fee of 3.75 million euros for the Serbian international.

But because of McIntosh’s legal wrangle with Blues over the transfer of Christian Benitez from Santos Laguna – he has reported them to FIFA – he said he couldn’t guarantee they would be sole suitors, especially as they appeared to be getting cold feet.

“They can go and speak direct to the club if they want but I have the exclusive mandate to get specific terms for the player, and that’s come from their sporting director,” McIntosh said.

“So that could have more [legal] ramifications if they did do that.

“I have managed to get Birmingham a fantastic deal for a player who absolutely destroyed Everton not too long ago in Europe.

“At the time there was talk of £10 million offers, but Standard Liege didn’t want to sell.

“Now he is coming to the end of his contract in June, and they have realised he doesn’t want to re-sign, so they are looking to get the maximum price in January.”

“Jovanovic is a great talent. He can play coming in off the left or right, even though he is essentially left-footed, or straight up front.

‘‘He has a presence, his goals record speaks for itself, and there are plenty of clubs out there who want him,” McIntosh added.

Jovanovic, scorer of 76 goals in 129 appearances for Liege, would probably command wages of around £30,000-a-week.

McIntosh has a beef with Blues because he felt he was frozen out of the Benitez transfer after initially being given the go-ahead to bring him to Blues by the old board.

He said although the Carson Yeung regime “didn’t start the fire”, they would now have to suffer any potential knock-on effects and then take issue with David Sullivan themselves.

“They still intend to benefit from the performances of the player. They inherited the situation, they have to deal with it,” he said.