Neil Warnock has worked with a lot of footballers in his time. So when he says one of them is the best he’s ever had, that is not a worthless statement.
Though those with whom he is most associated are, naturally, the muck and nettles types he admires, Warnock has enjoyed the use of plenty of strikers who have retailed for high prices.
They’ve not all been Josh Parker, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas and Laurent D’Jaffo; he’s also had a front-row seat to the works of El-Hadji Diouf, Marouane Chamakh and Dean Windass.
Bojan Miovski has not needed long to make a major impression.
With more than 1,600 games in his memory banks, it has taken only two for Warnock to declare Miovski the finest finisher he has encountered.
No wonder.
With three goals in three hours’ play, he is rollicking along at a strike rate better than any of them, with apologies to Danny Butterfield for asterisking his efforts.
It is perhaps not the most consequential borderline decision Edinburgh has seen video referees make in recent weeks, but the cancellation of Miovski’s terrific Tynecastle strike is all that interrupts a remarkable streak to open 2024.
But for the decision to penalise him for being run across, Miovski would have registered a goal in each of Aberdeen’s first eight matches of this calendar year, and would have equalled a post-war record held since 1961 by Ken Brownlee.
The Aberdonian pessimist might mumble that it’s a good job Miovski is writing his name onto the scoresheet so regularly, since nobody else is.
But as the one player whose remit fully focuses on scoring, it is not abnormal that he receives the most chances to do so.
That he converts them so reliably? You need to watch a lot of football to see that.
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