WHIRLWIND START
Nottingham Forest defender Alexander Milosevic on life in the Championship
BY YESTERDAY, Alexander Milosevic had been in this country 17 days. His feet have hardly touched the ground.
He flew in on the Thursday, played for Nottingham Forest at Birmingham on the Saturday. Brentford, West Brom and then Preston yesterday all followed.
“This is my job, to be ready for everything,” says Milosevic, a 27-year-old Swedish central defender who has the opportunity to make himself a key part in Martin O’Neill’s rebuild of Nottingham Forest.
If Forest are going to gatecrash the play-offs, then O’Neill has no time.
“That’s exactly it,” says O’Neill. “I have to find out about these players very quickly and the best way to do that is to see them on the field of play.
“There are lads who will think they maybe haven’t had a proper chance yet. That will come because the season is so demanding, it will happen in the next couple of weeks anyway.
“I’ll take it from there. It will be nice at some stage to know the strengths and weaknesses of all the players.”
Milosevic has done himself no harm in his sudden-impact debut.
He stands 6ft 3ins and defends like a defender should. There is no ‘pass it around the back for half an hour’ here. Milosevic tackles hard and then gives the ball to someone who can play. O’Neill will recognise that phrase. It’s what Brian Clough used to say to his central defenders Larry Lloyd and Kenny Burns when Forest were on the way to winning the European Cup. Alongside Milosevic is Yohan Benalouane, at 6ft 2ins, as O’Neill looks for his modern version of the imposing Lloyd and Burns. You can see where O’Neill is going here - strength, power and height. Tunisian international Benalouane was O’Neill’s first signing on his first day at Forest. O’Neill was doing his inaugural press conferences, talking to TV, radio, the national media and making sure the Benalouane deal was done all at the same time. There are other central defensive options for O’Neill, top of them being experienced 35-yearold Michael Dawson. He was signed by O’Neill’s predecessor Aitor Karanka to bring experience, strength and leadership to the club. But Dawson hasn’t played since the first day of December because of hamstring trouble and is not expected to be fit until next month. There is a big opportunity here for Milosevic. “I am not here to joke around,” says Milosevic. “It’s not about being happy just to train. I want to win games and try and take the Nottingham Forest club back to where it belongs. “There are so many people who are interested in Nottingham Forest. I think there is a history to this club.
“The club has achieved success before, but we want to achieve something again now. I want to be part of something big.”
Going into yesterday’s game at Preston, Forest had won two, lost two and drawn one of the five games of Messiah O’Neill’s second coming. There are signs of him making judgements on his players, as he said, and defining a playing pattern.
Ryan Yates, 21, is another like Milosevic who is stating a case. Yates had been on loan and was just about surviving on the outskirts of the Forest first team squad until O’Neill gave him his league debut in the win over Brentford followed by a goal in the midweek draw with West Brom.
“He has a fantastic attitude,” says O’Neill of the reason he’s brought Yates into the team. “It would be great to see him do well in his career.
“His attitude alone, that’s not enough, but he certainly has that about him.”
Yates is just starting to make waves but Milosevic has had his fans for some time.
H e trained with Celtic and Fiorentina in his early days and Liverpool, Arsenal Spurs, Sunderland, FK Partizan and Ajax have all had a look while he has been with AIK in Sweden.
Werder Bremen bid £550,000 but AIK turned it down and Milosevic, who has a Serbian father and
Swedish mother, stayed. A loan to Turkish club Besiktas two years ago helped harden him up, plus a spell in the Bundesliga with Hannover, and Milosevic comes to Nottingham with AIK’s first Swedish title in nine years next to his name and seven international caps.
“I have to be my best,” says Milosevic of his attitude to playing football. “I don’t want to wait. I have to do my best. I have to be ready to tackle, to be ready to fight.
“That is my spirit. As a player when I get a lot of the ball I become even stronger in defence.”
But Milosevic has barely played since AIK won the league in November, making the demands on him at Forest even tougher.
There was a friendly with Sweden that got the legs turning over a little bit, but nothing to really get geared up for the non-stop world of the Championship.
Milosevic hired a personal trainer in Sweden and worked out twice a day.
“To play in the Championship you had better be ready,” he admits.
“I am coming to something new. I arrived on a Thursday night and had my medical. Then I trained Friday and Saturday and then ‘boom’ it’s Birmingham away. I couldn’t think too much. I didn’t know the names of my teammates in front of me properly, but it was okay I think.”
O’Neill has certainly been impressed so far.
He said: “Milosevic was someone recommended to me when I first came to the club and was in need of finding centre-halves because we had so many injuries.
“He’d hardly played out in Stockholm there, so for Milosevic to come in like he has and play in a team that he knew nothing about a few days earlier is credit to him.
“I’m hoping, of course, that he can keep up that early form he’s showing for us.”
Getting Milosevic in on a free transfer could be a big coup for Forest. He is on the same 18-month contract as O’Neill himself is on and at the end of that rainbow there has to be a pot of promotion gold if the contracts are going to be extended.
“Nottingham Forest as a club is very big,” says Milosevic. “But we have to find our new identity.
“My goal has to be to adapt to the football in the Championship. It is among the most difficult leagues in the world and I must adapt quickly.
“The manager has his way of playing and all of us have to adapt to that as well. It was a big decision for me to make and the fact that Martin O’Neill is the coach was a big part of me coming.
“In the future if somebody is going to talk about this Nottingham Forest then I hope they will talk about a team that is very strong.”