Today is the 35th birthday of former Tottenham Hotspur striker Roman Pavlyuchenko, and it’s time to celebrate. Pav joined Spurs in 2008, not long after I started following them, and was part of a stable of strikers under Harry Redknapp that included at the time Robbie Keane, Darren Bent, Jermain Defoe, and Frazier Campbell, and eventually Peter Crouch.
Happy Birthday to the greatest Russian player to ever grace a football pitch
— Kevin (@FfsPavlyuchenko) December 15, 2016
Roman Pavlyuchenko pic.twitter.com/vHjyOwCe5p
Pav was a pretty decent back-up striker, scoring 42 goals in 113 appearances for Spurs. He wasn’t the guy you wanted to start, but he was great as a late game impact substitute or in the domestic cups. Spurs could probably use a Pavlyuchenko-esque player right now. He had moments of brilliance too, like this impressive free kick against Rubin Kazan in the 2011 Europa League:
But if you were around in the early days of Cartilage Free Captain, you know that Pav was known more for his hilariously bad long-range shots than for anything else. His ability to sky free kicks and shots over the bar and practically into orbit gave birth to the Pavlyuchenko Meme, the results of which circulated around the comment sections here for YEARS. Remnants of it still pop up in comment sections today: “Pav’d,” “Row Z.”
I did some Googling and trawling through the Carty Free archives, and alas a great number of the Pav memes have been lost to the mists of time. In honor of his birthday, I thought it was time to bring back the Pav memes that remain, in their glorious, five year old splendor. Some of these I made! Many of them are from some guy named Lennon’s Eyebrow. Skipjack probably made a couple. Others I don’t recall.
Sit back and enjoy this trip down memory lane with me, gentle reader. And feel free to put any additional Pav memes you can find in the comments (or feel free to make new ones)! Happy birthday, Pav. You iz always airplane ov mai heart.