Last season may have been frustrating for Croatian striker Davor Suker, but when he arrived at Highbury last month to finalise his deal with Arsene Wenger and Arsenal, the 31-year-old's behaviour was perfectly true to form.

After signing his contract, the former Croatia Zagreb man headed straight for the club's museum. A special screening of the film of the club's history was arranged complete with footage of some of Arsenal's greatest stars. Then, and only then, was the new man able to face the press and talk confidently about how he viewed his prospects at his new club.

It was typical of a man who is a devoted student of the game. At his home in Madrid one large room was dedicated to nothing but the storage of video tapes. Here the man who did so much to bring the league title back to the Bernabeu in 1997 would spend hours on end weighing up his own performances and those of opponents both past and future. For a man renowned for his instinctive play, Suker certainly likes to be diligent about his preparations.

When he met the English media that mid-August afternoon he was an instant hit.

The fact that he had taken a cut in pay from £40,000 to £25,000 in order to fit in with the Highbury wage structure and spoke so highly of the Premiership endeared him immediately to British football correspondents.

He had, he insisted, been determined to play in the English top flight since experiencing the unique atmosphere of the stadiums there during Euro '96. The real reasons behind his enthusiasm for the relocation may be somewhat less flattering to the "greatest league in the world".

After turning down lucrative offers to move to Chelsea and Arsenal during the early summer, rising Dutch star Ruud van Nistelrooy of PSV Eindhoven conceded that heading for London would probably have been the easy option for a man in his position. "England is the best country for a striker," he said with a smile, "for the defenders there aren't so clever."

For Suker, who made it clear that he had had better offers, though pointedly none from Italy or Spain, only a move to England could have offered the desired combination of prestige, pay packet and less than clever defenders that he yearned for after what had become a nightmare phase in his career at Real Madrid.

Matters had been on the slide for the Croat at club level since the end of that glorious 1996-'97 season when his 24 league goals had been of such central importance in winning the league for Real. The following season his form dipped at a time when he was being romantically linked in the Spanish media with local television star, Ana Obregon.

The club's supporters weren't long about making a connection and as he lost out in the team to Yugoslavia's Predrag Mijatovicand there was little enough sympathy for a man who, in their view, had gotten his priorities somewhat mixed up.

In the end, Real won the Champions League, but while Mijatovic's contribution to the success was crucial, Suker only came on in the 89th minute when the match was already won. Six goals in the World Cup finals in France might have been expected to turn things around.

He certainly thought they would, although had he remembered the examples of Toto Schillacci from Italia '90 or Oleg Salenko from US '94, both of whom also scored six goals without ever doing much of note again, he may have been less confident.

Back at Madrid after the competition - and a knee operation - he once again failed to win a regular place in the starting lineup and made only 14 appearances over the whole of the season.

Clearly frustrated, he publicly accused Real manager John Toshack of leaking information to the media and was suspended without pay.

The dispute descended into farce when Suker, in London in the hope of moving to Spurs, West Ham or even Fulham, spent £16 at Harrods on a teddy bear for his girlfriend. "I would have thought a woman like that deserved more," quipped Toshack. "Given that he is not being paid he was hardly going to buy me a diamond ring," snarled his girlfriend back.

The coach ended up apologising for the remark, but only after making an idiot of himself when it was put to him by some journalists that some of his comments had been a case off washing his dirty linen in public.

"I've come to wash out the stains made by others and to hang the sheets out in the fresh air," exclaimed the former Liverpool player. Suker, perhaps finally realising that he couldn't top that, decided to get out of town.

Even after Suker's move to Highbury was completed, however, Toshack insisted that Wenger had "bought himself a lot of trouble". The Frenchman might have taken some convincing given that he had just offloaded Nicolas Anelka. Furthermore, Wenger insisted "he was outstanding at the last World Cup and it was difficult to understand why he did not play regularly for Real Madrid last season.

"Davor is an Ian Wright figure," continued the Arsenal boss, "he has a nose for goals in the box, he is clinical in front of goal, has decent pace, he's quick-thinking and has quick feet."

All the qualities indeed which have marked him out as special since his days with his local club, Osijek. While there he was a member of Yugoslavia's Youth World Cup winning side in Chile in 1989, a team that also included Robert Prosinecki and Robert Jarni, and it was his eye for goal, quick thinking and quick feet that earned him a move first to Dinamo (now Croatia) Zagreb and then, in 1991 at the age of 23, Seville.

They may also have saved his life. While more run of the mill players were drafted into the army and sent to the front during the war, the very best were not considered to be expendable.

Suker, whose father had been an Olympic shot putter, made clear his allegiances during the conflict but spent the worst part of it in southern Spain. On the football pitch, though, he served his newly-independent homeland well, scoring regularly throughout his international career in amassing 41 goals in his 50 senior appearances to date.

His move to England suggests that he knows what other have suspected - that his best days are behind him. Still Wenger will see him as a key player this season since Dennis Bergkamp will only be available for home games during the latter stages of the Champions League and Nwanko Kanu will be away for a month for the African Nations Championships.

In the longer term his importance may not be so great, but then it is not the longer term that Mick McCarthy has to worry about, it is tonight. And when Suker says of himself, as he does, that "Suker is an honest, super professional from head to toe", there's at least enough truth in there for the men he's doubtless watched a few times on tape to be at least a little worried.