D-Day for Petrovic as Blackburn Rovers make plea to Home Office

By Andy Cryer 
SERBIAN international Radosav Petrovic faces his Blackburn Rovers D-Day today – as Steve Kean looks for the Home Office to give his Premier League preparations a major boost.
Partizan Belgrade’s 22-year-old midfielder has agreed personal terms with Rovers and passed a medical, after the club had a bid in the region of £3million accepted, but his fate is now in the Government’s hands as he waits for work permit clearance.
Boss Kean travelled to London this morning to speak for the energetic midfielder’s case, after he narrowly missed out on the criteria needed to trigger an automatic green light.
To automatically gain a work permit to play in England, players are required to have played in 75 per cent of their country’s matches over the past two years – provided they are ranked in FIFA’s top 70 in the world.
Serbia are comfortably in the top 70, ranked 27th, but Petrovic has not played in 75 per cent of his nation’s matches, despite having appeared 18 times for them since his debut in August 2009.
The 6ft 4ins midfielder was named in Serbia’s 2010 World Cup squad, appearing as a substitute in the win over Germany, and has been named in the squad for this week’s friendly in Moscow against Russia.
Petrovic is now understood to be considered as a key member of Serbia’s squad, which will boost the players chances of being granted a work permit.
Due to international commitments, Petrovic won’t be in attendance at the hearing but Rovers are confident their case is strong enough to be successful.
Kean said: “I will be down in London on Tuesday for that hearing. I think he has got a very good case.
“I have looked over all the notes and I think we have a very good case and hopefully the panel can be lenient that he has just missed out on the number of games needed to be an automatic trigger.”
Petrovic would become Kean’s third signing of the summer, having already added Myles Anderson from Aberdeen and David Goodwillie from Dundee United.
The Rovers boss is still hopeful of adding a new striker, midfielder and defender to the squad before the end of the transfer window as efforts to strengthen continue behind the scenes.
Rovers remain in talks with Greek outfit PAOK over the future of Portuguese winger Vieirinha, with sources close to Venky’s hopeful a deal can be done.