Marlon Harewood

Marlon Anderson Harewood (born August 25, 1979 in Hampstead, Greater London) is an England Association football of Barbados origin who plays as a forward for Aston Villa F.C.. He started his career at Nottingham Forest F.C., had a successful spell on loan to FC Haka before joining West Ham United in 2003 and then Aston Villa in 2007.

Club career

Nottingham Forest

Harewood was a product of the Nottingham Forest youth system., where he was inexplicably known as "Alf", and made his league debut in 1998. In the same year, he acquired experience abroad with a successful loan spell at FC Haka of the Finland Veikkausliiga, winning both the Finnish championship and the Finnish Cup. In 1999, he had a further loan spell with Ipswich Town F.C., scoring one goal in six appearances. Harewood went on to forge a reputation as one of the most lethal strikers in the Football League First Division. He scored 51 goals in 124 league games and 58 substitute appearances for Forest and also scored four goals in 23 cup appearances. However, Harewood's contract was due to expire in summer 2004 and having been offered a worse contract than he was already on, rejected it and decided to leave. After signing for West Ham, new manager Alan Pardew hoped that the powerful striker could have a similar effect on the Hammers Promotion and relegation hopes the following season. Harewood was the top scorer for West Ham in 2004-05 in English football with 23 goals in all competitions. He returned to top flight football following West Ham's playoff victory at the end of the 2004–05 season, and the FA Premier League 2005-06 season saw Marlon spearheading Pardew’s Premiership attack. He scored 14 league goals, including the first top flight hat-trick of the season in a 4–0 home victory against Aston Villa F.C. and also put West Ham in front after just 52 seconds against Manchester United F.C. also at Upton Park. Harewood became one of the top scoring strikers of the 2005-2006 season and after scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup semi-final against Middlesbrough F.C., Harewood responded by saying, "I can't really describe how I felt at the time; you can't put something like that into words, it's a chapter in my career that I have dreamed about doing since I was a little kid. After making the big step-up from Nottingham Forest to West Ham, I knew I had to work hard if I wanted to get to where the top strikers in the country were."

Harewood collected an FA Cup runners-up medal with West Ham that season, after they lost on penalties following a 3-3 draw with Liverpool. He was also the club's top Premiership goalscorer with 14 league goals.

Following a torrid run of results for West Ham, including a defeat to League 1 side Chesterfield F.C., Harewood scored a dramatic last-minute winner against title-hopefuls Arsenal F.C. in November 2006. This subsequently resulted in a highly emotional confrontation between the two managers. In May 2007, Harewood confirmed that he would leave West Ham in the summer after falling out of favour at the club. In July, it was confirmed that Marlon was in talks at Aston Villa's training ground and his agent, Mick McGuire, said, "Marlon has been in talks with Villa and everything should be concluded soon. Villa have come in at the 11th hour to take him."

Aston Villa

Harewood joined Villa on 17 July 2007 for a fee reported by The Times to be £4 million, signing a three-year deal. Marlon said, "I was all set to sign for Wigan on the Monday when I got a phone call saying Martin O’Neill wanted to speak to me. I might have had a better chance of getting into Wigan’s first team, but, with no disrespect to them, when Martin O’Neill phones you up asking you to join a massive club like Aston Villa, and he’s explaining what he wants to do and how he wants to go about it, that sold it to me."