| Stan Collymore | ||
| Personal information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Stanley Victor Collymore | |
| Date of birth | 22 January 1971 | |
| Place of birth | Stone, England | |
| Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | |
| Playing position | Striker | |
| Youth clubs | ||
| 1988-1989 1989-1990 |
Walsall Wolverhampton Wanderers |
|
| Senior clubs1 | ||
| Years | Club | App (Gls)* |
| 1990 1990-1992 1992-1993 1993-1995 1995-1997 1997-2000 1999 2000 2000-2001 2001 |
Stafford Rangers Crystal Palace Southend United Nottingham Forest Liverpool Aston Villa → Fulham (loan) Leicester City Bradford City Real Oviedo Total |
20 (1) 30 (15) 65 (41) 63 (28) 46 (7) 6 (0) 11 (5) 7 (2) 3 (0) 251 (99) |
| National team2 | ||
| 1994-1998 | England | 3 (0) |
|
1 Senior club appearances and goals |
||
Stanley Victor Collymore (born 22 January 1971 in Stone, Staffordshire) is a retired English footballer.
Contents |
Early career
A talented centre forward, Collymore started his career as an apprentice footballer with Walsall, and also Wolverhampton Wanderers, before being released and signing for then GM Vauxhall Conference team, Stafford Rangers, where again he caught the eye of several football league clubs by demonstrating the ability for spectacular goals before being given his chance as a full-time professional with Crystal Palace at the age of 19, when he signed for them in December 1990. After life at Crystal Palace he moved on to Southend United, then was snapped up by Nottingham Forest. He hit 24 goals - 19 in 28 league games - as Forest won an immediate return to the Premier League. At that time his manager Frank Clark said a £10m offer might tempt him to sell. The 1995-96 saw Collymore return 25 goals as Forest finished third in the Premiership and qualified for the UEFA Cup. At the season's end Collymore was rewarded with his first England cap against Japan and Terry Venables also gave him a run out against Brazil. An eventful summer saw Collymore move to Merseyside in an £8.5m deal and in his first season at Liverpool he netted 19 times as the Reds finished third in the Premiership.
Professional career
After learning his trade as understudy to the prolific Crystal Palace partnership of Mark Bright and Ian Wright, Collymore dropped down a division to Southend United and there scored 18 goals in 31 games to help keep the club in the then First Division when the odds of relegation seemed certain. Collymore enjoyed his time at Southend saying, "I count helping to keep Southend in the first division in my season there as one of my finest achievements." [1] However such were the quality of his goals, usually spectacular solo efforts, Nottingham Forest bought the striker for a club-record fee that reached ₤3 million in the summer of 1993, having only been bought by Southend also for a club record fee of ₤150,000 six months earlier. Collymore's goalscoring record with Forest (50 goals in 71 games) was exceptional, and after being the main catalyst for helping Forest to immediate promotion back to the Premiership in 1993, cemented his reputation as one of the brightest young talents in world football by finishing his first season in the top flight with 25 goals and helping a team that had been relegated only two years earlier to finish third in the Premiership, a feat now that would guarantee UEFA Champions League qualification. Supporters at Forest regarded 'Stan The Man' as one of their greatest all-time strikers, he was skilful with lightning pace and scorer of many spectacular goals. Seemingly by 1995 he was the complete player, he could score with either foot and at 6 feet plus was also a threat in the air. This prompted Liverpool to come in for him with a then British transfer record bid of ₤8.5 million at the end of the 1994-95 season and Forest faded again without him and were relegated the next season. Collymore scored a spectacular goal on his Liverpool debut against Sheffield Wednesday and began a fruitful, enigmatic, and controversial two-year spell at Anfield. He scored at a ratio of a goal every other game and created many goals in a superb partnership with Robbie Fowler, who were regarded as arguably the best strike partnership in Europe, to winning caps for England. He also scored two goals, including the winner against Newcastle United at Anfield in a game that was regarded as one of the most exciting in the history of the English Premiership. Indeed, it was voted by viewers of Sky Sports as the greatest sporting moment in the channel's first ten years.[1] Collymore also helped Liverpool to third place in the Premiership, the club's highest position since winning the old First Division title in 1990. Undoubtedly a great footballer on his day, after two seasons at Anfield the striker was sold to Aston Villa in 1997 for ₤7 million, again a club record. In the three years that he spent at the club, Collymore scored only 15 goals, having been frozen out of the squad for over a year of John Gregory's reign as manager. Highs included being only the third Aston Villa player in history to score a hat-trick in European competition (the other two being his boyhood idols Gary Shaw and Peter Withe).
Dogging
Collymore spent many days on tabloid front pages in 1998, the result of the disintegration of his relationship with Swedish-born British television presenter Ulrika Jonsson after it was revealed he had hit her[2]. Jonsson, who described Collymore as a "monster" in her autobiography, later took out an injunction preventing him from releasing a sex tape involving the two, apparently made while they were on holiday in Jamaica; Collymore subsequently claimed to have destroyed the video. The incident, together with his admission of dogging around that time[3] was widely reported.[4]
Post-football career
Collymore contributed to his biography with Oliver Holt (2004). Stan : tackling my demons. ISBN 0-00-719807-8. which was released to critical acclaim for its portrayal of the modern footballer. In 2005 he acted the character of Kevin Franks in the film Basic Instinct 2 alongside Sharon Stone. Collymore is seen and heard regularly on television and radio in the UK, and owns Maverick Spirit Productions, a UK Television Production Company. On May 19, 2007, Collymore summarised for Australian television on the FA Cup Final between Manchester United and Chelsea at Wembley and the UEFA Champions League Final between Liverpool and AC Milan in Athens. Collymore will be a regular on Radio 5's Monday night club during the 2007 season, as a sumariser on Premier League matches and is a columnist for the Daily Mirror newspaper. He now co-hosts the weekly Football Magazine show Central Soccer Night on ITV Central with Sarah Jane Mee.
References
- ^ Ten years and counting. ESPN. Retrieved on 17 December, 2007.
- ^ Stan Collymore interview. BBC News Online. BBC. Retrieved on 2007-04-04.
- ^ Tim Adams. "Stan of many parts", Observer, Guardian News, 2004-03-14. Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
- ^ http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/021028/128/dd8xq.html
External links
