A glance at the blue streaks in his hair and thick fur coat was enough for keeper Mike Pollitt to confer the nickname on him when he signed from Brann Bergen.

Unorthodox scarcely begins to describe most of the methods instilled in him by Austrian mind coach Valentin Hobel, but he is adamant they work, all the same.

As match day nears, he bids farewell to his wife and two young children at the family home in Warrington and goes into solitary confinement, for anything up to 24 hours, to make sure he is "in the zone" when kick-off arrives.

To complete a character study that hardly fits the Premier League norm, he hangs on every note of Mozart's piano sonatas and sat enthralled as William Wallace, in the guise of Mel Gibson, delivered his address to the troops at Stirling in the film Braveheart, even if it was dubbed into German.