John Carew, Carew, he’s bigger than me and you, he’s gonna score one or two, John Carew, Carew…and all that jazz.

We think it is fair to say that Aston Villa were enjoying their finest Premier League years towards the latter stages of the previous decade. They sat in the top half of the table, for one; that beats the utter tripe the Villa faithful had to endure more recently. And they had some top quality players at their disposal. You know, “proper” talents who deserved to slip on the claret and blue. The likes of Gareth Barry, Stiliyan Petrov, Emile Heskey, James Milner, Ashley Young, Luke Young and of course John Carew.

What a player. What a machine.

Aston Villa were in desperate need of some rejuvenating in the forward positions and John Carew was delegated the saviour.

But how much was he, you might ask? £10million? £20million? £30million?! None of the above. In what can only be described as daylight robbery, the 6ft 4in Norway international graced Martin O’Neill’s squad in a straight swap for Milan Baros (as per Independent). The Liverpool flop had been booed just the week before for wasting countless opportunities during the 2-0 defeat of Watford and registered just a single goal the season he left.

“Bargain” springs to mind.

Of course, we were not to know that Carew was going to be such a hit. The Norwegian had been in pretty poor form himself only netting once in Ligue 1, and his history off the pitch was not exactly inspiring either – having attacked international John Arne Riise on their country’s team bus.

That is beside the point, though, being John Carew, Carew…

The forward left Villa after four seasons with a pretty decent record of 37 goals in 113 appearances. Cult hero? We think so.