Marlon King

Marlon Francis King (born 26 April 1980) is a former professional footballer who played as a striker.

Born and raised in south London, he started his career in non-League football with Dulwich Hamlet.

After making 60 first team appearances for Barnet he moved to Gillingham in 2000.

King left Priestfield to join Nottingham Forest in 2003 for a fee of £950,000.

He scored 15 goals in 57 games.

He struggled to win over the fans at Nottingham Forest, before netting an injury-time winning goal in an emotional match against West Ham United, the first after the death of Brian Clough.

He played for Barnet, Gillingham, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest before moving to Watford in 2005.

At Watford he was the Football League Championship top scorer, and was voted Watford player of the season as the club earned promotion to the Premier League.

King was loaned to Leeds United in March 2005 for the remainder of the 2004–05 season.

Whilst at Leeds, manager Kevin Blackwell mainly played King out of position on the wing, and as a result King failed to net a single goal for Leeds, including missing a penalty kick against Leicester City.

In total he played nine games for Leeds and returned to Nottingham Forest in the summer of 2005 after his loan spell ended.

In the summer of 2005 King was loaned to Watford for six months, with an option to buy in the January transfer window.

He impressed at the Hertfordshire club, scoring 12 goals in 21 games as Watford featured in the upper reaches of the table.

King scored his first goal for the Hornets in a 3–3 draw away at Plymouth Argyle on 9 August, and followed this up with two goals at Cardiff City in his next match.

The transfer was made permanent for £500,000 in January, and King went on to finish top scorer in the 2005–06 Championship with 21 goals.

Watford finished third, with King scoring in the 3–0 semi-final first leg win over Crystal Palace.

He played in the second leg, and in the final against Leeds United, which Watford won 3–0 to win promotion to the FA Premier League.

King was named the club's Player of the Season.

King scored his debut Premier League goal against West Ham United in the second game of the new season.

His second Premier League goal, the first in a 3–3 draw with Fulham on 2 October 2006 marked his 100th goal in domestic competition.

In the following game, away at Arsenal, he sustained a knee injury which kept him out of the next three games.

During his return to fitness he suffered a relapse, and in an exploratory operation it was discovered that some bone had flaked away from his femur.

The injury kept him out of action for six months, and he did not return until 14 April 2007, when he came on as a substitute in the 4–1 FA Cup semi–final loss to Manchester United at Villa Park.

He scored in the final two games of the season, away at Reading and at home to Newcastle United to bring his season tally to four.

Watford were relegated and returned to the Championship for the 2007–08 season.

With Watford topping the table for much of the first half of the season, King scored ten goals before the end of 2007, including five in successive games in October.

King joined Wigan Athletic in 2008, and subsequently spent loan spells at Hull City and Middlesbrough.

King had a medical at Fulham in January 2008, which Fulham at the time said he had failed.

He signed for Wigan Athletic on a three-and-a-half-year contract for an undisclosed fee on 25 January 2008.

Watford chairman Graham Simpson said that King had left for a fee of £3million rising to £4million, dependent on appearances and Wigan keeping their Premier League status, and it was reported that King doubled his wages to £40,000 per week.

King scored his first and what turned out to be only goal for Wigan against Blackburn Rovers on 22 March.

In August 2008, Premier League newcomers Hull City bid an undisclosed amount for King, which Wigan accepted.

City agreed personal terms with King, but the move fell through as he was unable to negotiate the terms of his exit with Wigan.

Following King's conviction in October 2009 Fulham manager Roy Hodgson said "I think we got lucky in that we didn't sign him. There was a problem with the medical and it also became a problem when we found out he had a jail sentence. Mohamed Al Fayed was not at all keen on that so the transfer was allowed to collapse and he went to Wigan instead."

He joined Coventry City in September 2010, following his release from prison, and made 29 appearances for the club before controversially switching to Birmingham City in June 2011.

He made 79 appearances for Birmingham, before suffering a series of injuries during the 2012–13 season that prevented him from playing again, leaving the club in August 2013 by mutual consent.

King has also played and scored for the Jamaica national team.

King has served three jail sentences, and has a number of other criminal convictions including: theft from a person and from a car, criminal damage, and attempting to obtain property by deception; fraudulent use of vehicle licence document, driving without insurance, speeding, drink driving; a wounding incident while playing amateur football, and two cases involving assault of young women rejecting his advances in the Soho area of London.

King had his playing contract cancelled by Wigan after being convicted of the sexual assault charges and being sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

King started his career at Dulwich Hamlet, before becoming a trainee at Barnet.