Aleksander Mitrovic counts to seven. He is illustrating how he has matured since becoming a father.
‘When I first signed for Newcastle, I was still a boy. If I lost my temper on the pitch then I could not even count to one,’ says the striker who was sent off just 16 minutes into his Premier League home debut. ‘Now, I get to six, sometimes seven’.
Mitrovic, you suspect, will never make it to 10. Even the birth of son Luka 17 months ago and the impeding arrival of a baby daughter will not entirely tame the temperamental Serb, who confesses that football saved him from a life he would rather not imagine.