Roman Pavlyuchenko is a striker who plays for Russian side Lokomotiv Moscow and the Russian national team. Pavlyuchenko began his career with Dynamo Stavropol before moving to Rotor Volgograd in the top flight in 2000. After joining Spartak Moscow in 2003, Pavlyuchenko went on to become the leading striker in Russia’s Premier League in 2006 and 2007. He was first called up to the Russian national team in 2003 and introduced himself to all English football fans when Russia played England in 2007. Russia won the Euro 2008 qualifier 2-1 and Pavlyuchenko scored both goals. He went on to become Russia’s top scorer at the 2008 Championship and included in the Euro 2008 Team of the Tournament. (The four forwards honoured with their names in that dream team were Pavlyuchenko and his country man Andrei Arshavin, plus Spaniards David Villa and Fernando Torres.)
In September 2008 Pavlyuchenko was signed by Juande Ramos at Tottenham. He made his debut that same month and soon started scoring goals for his new club. However Juande Ramos was sacked as manager towards the end of October. New manager Harry Redknapp gradually moved Pavlyuchenko down the pecking order amongst his strikers. By the start of the 2009-10 season he had Defoe, Crouch and Keane all being preferred ahead of him. On 1 February 2010 Keane went on loan to Scottish side Celtic for the rest of the season. Pavlyuchenko was given the chance again and grabbed it by scoring several important goals. He is a firm favourite with the fans, often referring to him as Super-Pav, and he decided to stay on with Spurs. Pavlyuchenko played an important role at the start of the 2010-11 season, in particular stepping up for Spurs in the Champions League. However Redknapp would keep benching him even after having scored crucial goals for the team. He was tipped to leave in the summer but stayed on until the January 2012 transfer window. Pavlyuchenko made his move back to Russia and signed for Lokomotiv for a fee of £8 million. He maintained that his main reason for wanting to leave Spurs was the need of regular football to be included in Russia’s squad for the Euro 2012.