Here is a link to an article from a Serbian newspaper provided to us by a new member to the forum who has also kindly translated it for us.  It gives the inside track on the transfer and reveals how a certain club up the road was also interested.  Below is the translation.

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Milan Calasan gave an interview to our 2nd biggest sport paper called… erm, “Sport”. He claims that in the hours before Zigic signed for you guys he received the phone call from Aston Villa. They said they want to sign Zigic and asked Calasan to wait for couple of days because O’Neill is on vacation and he has to be present when any transfer is negotiated. Calasan comment was: “in the following circumstances, there is nothing more logical then to finish the business with the club which opened all doors to us”.

Then he goes on about how the deal was done: “We were in “Radisson” hotel, McLeish came to visit us with his missus, he spent over one hour speaking with Zigic, with translator’s help”. (There’s an answer to your question about Zigic’s english). “McLeish believes in Zigic, he claims that Serb will be the key player in the next couple of seasons. It’s so great when a player has that kind of support from a manager, it’s much, much more easier for him when he knows he will play every single minute and that’s the only thing that was missing while Zigic played for Valencia”.

He claims that Zigic will get 2.5 million euros per year, he didn’t want to say how much Valencia got, but people from Red Star say we will get 350.000 euros according to UEFA regulations (5% of each transfer for the club in which he established himself), so the transfer should be around 7 million euros. Calasan also says that there are many very lucrative bonuses for Zigic if “Birmingham reaches it’s goals”, but he didn’t say which goals.