Mike Newell

Michael Colin Newell (born 27 January 1965) is an English football manager and former professional footballer.

As a player, he was a striker and represented 13 different clubs in his career, playing a total of 530 league games and scoring 120 goals.

Manager Colin Harvey paid for this nightmare start to the season with his job, only to rejoin Everton a week later when Howard Kendall began his second spell as manager and appointed Harvey as his assistant in the old manager/coach partnership that had brought so much success from 1981 to 1987.

Newell also played for Crewe Alexandra, Wigan Athletic, Luton Town, Leicester City, Everton, Birmingham City, West Ham United, Bradford City, Aberdeen, Doncaster Rovers and Blackpool between the years of 1982 and 2001.

Newell totalled £3,585,000 in transfer fees over the duration of his career.

As a manager, he has had spells with Hartlepool United, Luton Town and Grimsby Town.

Newell played for Liverpool's youth teams as a schoolboy, but was released without being offered terms.

He made three league appearances for Crewe Alexandra in 1983 as part of a trial before signing for Wigan Athletic of the Third Division in October of that year.

After scoring 25 goals at this level, Newell moved up to the First Division in January 1986 when he joined Luton Town for £85,000.

On 26 October 1986, he scored a hat-trick in a 4–1 league win over Liverpool – the defending double-winners and the dominant English league side of that time.

Early in the 1987–88 season, he dropped down a division to sign for Leicester City, now managed by David Pleat - the man who had signed him for Luton two seasons earlier.

He scored a total of 21 Second Division goals at Filbert Street, but was unable to secure promotion to the First Division and joined Everton for £1.1million in the summer of 1989.

Newell's form at Goodison Park was unremarkable as he formed a three-man strikeforce with Graeme Sharp and Tony Cottee, and with three strikers in the first eleven there was little pressure on any of them to score 20 or 30 goals a season.

However, the three-man strikeforce was looking like a success as they spearheaded Everton to the top of the league in late autumn of 1989 and were starting to look like serious title contenders for perhaps the first time since Howard Kendall's departure as manager in June 1987, but Everton were unable to maintain this form and dipped to sixth place in the final table.

Newell had managed seven goals that season from 26 league appearances.

Shortly after joining Everton he was called up to the senior England squad by Bobby Robson for a game against Poland, but he remained on the bench and was ultimately never capped at this level.

1990–91 began terribly for Everton.

By 31 October 1990, they were a lowly 18th in the league and had endured their worst ever start to a league campaign - battling relegation only a year since they had led the league and looked good bets for the title.

Newell initially remained in favour under Kendall, scoring seven goals again that season, one of them in a 2–0 win over Manchester United on 2 March 1991 in a game which also saw the Manchester United debut of Ryan Giggs.

Despite the arrival of Peter Beardsley from Liverpool for the 1991–92 season, Newell managed to make 13 league appearances for Everton (scoring once) before his £1.1million transfer to Second Division promotion challengers Blackburn Rovers, managed by former Liverpool player and manager Kenny Dalglish and bankrolled by the wealth of owner Jack Walker.

He was Blackburn's record signing at the time, and the most expensive player yet to be signed by a club outside the top flight.

He broke his leg soon afterwards, and Blackburn went from being Second Division leaders to having to win their final game of the season to achieve a playoff place, but Newell was fit for the playoffs and after helping them overcome Derby County in the semi-finals, he scored the penalty in their 1–0 playoff final win over his former club Leicester City at Wembley Stadium as they sealed a place in the new FA Premier League and ended their 26-year absence from the top flight of English football.

In 1992–93, Newell was Blackburn's second highest goalscorer with 13 league goals as they finished fourth in the Premier League.

They had looked like championship contenders for much of the season, but Newell lacked the much-needed support up front after late December when strike partner Alan Shearer suffered a serious knee injury and missed the rest of the season.

However, he managed 6 goals in 28 games in 1993–94, battling it out with Kevin Gallacher for the role of Shearer's strike partner as Blackburn finished second.

Newell scored the 1,000th goal of the Premier League era during Blackburn's 3–1 win at Nottingham Forest in April 1993.

But the arrival of Chris Sutton for the 1994–95 saw Newell fall behind in the pecking order at Ewood Park.

Blackburn finished the season as league champions for the first time in 81 years.

However, he did meet the requirement of 10 league appearances for a title medal, starting two league games and appearing a further 10 times as a substitute, although he failed to score a goal that season.

He was a member of the Blackburn Rovers team which won the Premier League in 1995, and in a game against Rosenborg in the 1995–96 season, Newell scored (what was at the time) the fastest-ever hat-trick in the UEFA Champions League, netting his three goals in a spell of only nine minutes.

Newell also held the record for the fastest hat-trick in Champions League history after scoring three goals in nine minutes for Blackburn against Rosenborg BK in the 1995–96 season, until this was broken in the 2011–12 season by Bafétimbi Gomis of Lyon with three in seven minutes.

His hat-trick also made history as the first by an English player in the newly branded UEFA Champions League since its transformation from the five-round knockout format of the original European Cup.

He left Blackburn for Birmingham City for £750,000 in the summer of 1996.

However, this spell proved to be unsuccessful, Newell scoring only three times with a strike against Sheffield United in the league and a brace against Brighton in the League Cup.

This was the beginning of a five-year spell at seven different clubs.

Newell left Birmingham to join West Ham United on loan in December 1996, before a similar spell at Bradford City in March 1997.

Before he was loaned to West Ham, Birmingham had accepted a £750,000 bid from Bolton Wanderers for Newell, but he was unable to agree a contract and the transfer fell through.

In the summer of 1997, Newell left the English league for the first time when he was transferred to Aberdeen before drifting back into the English leagues with Crewe, Doncaster Rovers and finally Blackpool.

He retired from playing in May 2001, going out on a high as Blackpool celebrated promotion as Division Three playoff winners.

After retiring, Newell was appointed as the reserve team manager of Tranmere Rovers in October 2001, as well as working alongside the first team manager with all the professionals through the week.