Marlon Harewood

Marlon Anderson Harewood (born 25 August 1979) is an English former professional footballer who played as a striker.

Harewood started his career at Nottingham Forest.

Harewood is a product of the Nottingham Forest youth system, and made his league debut in 1998.

In the same year, he acquired experience abroad with a successful loan spell at Haka of the Finnish Veikkausliiga, winning both the Finnish championship and the Finnish Cup.

In 1999, he had a further loan spell with Ipswich Town, scoring one goal against Bury in six appearances.

Harewood went on to forge a reputation as one of the most lethal strikers in the 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.

He formed a brilliant attacking partnership with close friend David Johnson.

They scored 50 goals between them, of which Harewood netted 21 goals including 4 in one game against Stoke City, to fire Paul Hart's Forest into the playoffs for the 2002–03 season.

During his career there, he had loan spells at Haka and Ipswich Town before joining West Ham United in 2003 and then Aston Villa in 2007.

He caught the eye of West Ham fans when he scored for Forest in an FA Cup Third Round clash at Upton Park on 4 January 2003.

He joined West Ham United in November 2003 for a fee of £500,000.

After signing for West Ham, new manager Alan Pardew hoped that the powerful striker could have a similar effect on the Hammers promotion hopes the following season.

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.

Harewood was the top scorer for West Ham in 2004–05 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 2005–06 season saw Harewood 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 and also put West Ham in front after just 52 seconds against Manchester United 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, 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 Premier League goalscorer with 14 goals.

Following a torrid run of results for West Ham, including a defeat to League 1 side Chesterfield in the League Cup, Harewood scored a dramatic last-minute winner against title-hopefuls Arsenal 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 Harewood was in talks at Aston Villa's training ground.

Harewood joined Aston Villa on 17 July 2007 for a fee of £4 million and signing a three-year deal.

Harewood 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.".

Harewood scored his 100th career league goal as Aston Villa beat Blackburn Rovers 4–0 at Ewood Park on 28 November 2007.

Harewood continued to be a fringe player at Aston Villa throughout the winter and eventually scored his second goal in the 2–2 draw with Liverpool in January.

His spirited substitute appearances for the club often turned games around and lead to him becoming a fan favourite at Villa Park.

The chant "Feed the Hare and he will score" rang around the Madejski Stadium after he scored Villa's second against Reading on 24 February 2008.

Despite his good performances from the bench Martin O'Neill continued to use him as a "super-sub" (albeit he did start against Manchester United due to injury troubles).

He scored his first goal at Villa Park in a 4–0 victory over Bolton and scored again the following week in a 6–0 win away to Derby County.

His next Villa goal did not come until October when he scored in a 1–1 draw with Litex Lovech in the UEFA Cup.

Harewood found his chances even more limited during the 2008–09 season.

He did not start a single Premier League match, and of his fourteen appearances in all competitions, eight were as a substitute.

The goal against Litex Lovech was the only time he scored that season.

In 2009, he spent short periods on loan at Wolverhampton Wanderers and Newcastle United.

After the arrival of Emile Heskey at Villa Park in January 2009, newspapers started speculating that his time at the club was coming to an end, with rumours of a move to Stoke, Sheffield United and Middlesbrough.

He eventually left Villa on loan, joining Wolverhampton Wanderers of the Championship for the remainder of the season on 23 March 2009.

In 2011, he was on-loan with Barnsley and completed a six-month contract with Guangzhou R&F in China League One.