Wayne Routledge

Wayne Neville Routledge (born January 7 1985 in Sidcup, London) and attended The Archbishop Lanfranc School (Croydon) is an England football (soccer), who currently plays for FA Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur F.C. after completing his season long loan spell at Fulham FC. He plays as a midfielder predominantly on the right wing but can also play on the left. He has represented England national football team at under-16, under-19 and England national under-21 football team level.
The pint-sized player loves to tear past full-backs and causes no end of problems. Pace is one of the key attributes in Premiership football and pace is something that Routledge has in abundance.

Football career

Routledge began his career at Crystal Palace F.C., making his starting debut (against Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.) at the age of 17 in September 2002, and scored after just one minute on the field. He made his Palace debut in October 2001 in a 1-0 home defeat by West Bromwich Albion, aged only 16. He was England's second ever player to score at the new Wembley Stadium.

He was an important member of the side which won promotion to the Premiership via the play-offs in 2003-04, and he was ever present as Palace battled for their Premiership place in 2004-05 in English football and, although they just failed to avoid the drop, Routledge proved to be an exciting talent on the wing, chipping in with an impressive 8 assists. He was not to leave the top flight, though. After rejecting a contract with the side that developed him as a youngster in January, Tottenham Hotspur F.C. snapped him up on July 1, 2005. The clubs could not come to an agreement over a fee for Routledge so the transfer went to a tribunal. There it was agreed that Palace would receive an initial £1.25m, rising to £2m depending upon appearances in future.

After impressing in the pre-season, His career at White Hart Lane started slowly as he unfortunately suffered a broken foot on his league debut for the club, but on December 122005 he made his return as a substitute in only his second game for Spurs against Portsmouth F.C..

He was loaned to Portsmouth in the January 2006 transfer window and made 13 appearances for them before returning to Spurs at the season's end, impressing boss Harry Redknapp in a home game against Bolton Wanderers by outpacing three Bolton players into the penalty box to set Azar Karadas up for a spectacular volley that earned relegation-threatened Portsmouth a crucial 1-1 draw against the Trotters.

After impressing in the pre-season again, he was once again loaned out, this time to Fulham, as part of the deal that brought Steed Malbranque to the White Hart Lane club. This was also partly due to the emergence of Aaron Lennon at both club and international level.

His Fulham bow came as a 34th minute replacement for injury victim Jimmy Bullard in a 2-1 victory at Newcastle United. He went on to create two goals in the final ten minutes of the match.

On 18 August2007, Routledge was selected in the starting line-up against Derby County F.C.. He had an impressive game, giving width to the team on the right of midfield which was previously missing with the absence of the injured Aaron Lennon. In the game, he came close to scoring what would have been his first goal for the first team when he was deemed to be offside. His outside-of-the-foot chip to put the ball in the back of the net was disallowed.