Chris Sutton

In his first season at Ewood Park, he developed a partnership (known as 'SAS') with Alan Shearer and scored fifteen Premier League goals, helping Blackburn Rovers to secure their first top-league title since 1914.

Sutton featured in 38 Premier League games that season, scoring 8 goals, which made him the club's 2nd highest scorer behind Mark Robins.

Christopher Roy Sutton (born 10 March 1973) is an English former professional football player and manager.

He later became a pundit and commentator for TNT Sports, regularly working on their coverage of Scottish football.

He is now also a pundit and occasional match co-commentator on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Chris Sutton was born on 10 March 1973 in Nottingham, East Midlands, England, the son of Mike Sutton, formerly a footballer with Norwich City.

His younger brother John also became a footballer, and has played for a number of clubs in both England and Scotland.

As a child, he moved with his family from East Leake in Nottinghamshire to Horsford in Norfolk.

Sutton started his career as a professional footballer at Norwich City, initially as a centre-half before being converted into a striker by manager Dave Stringer.

He played as a forward from 1991 to 2007 for Norwich City, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Celtic, Birmingham City and Aston Villa.

Sutton scored over 150 career goals in over 400 league appearances spanning 16 years in the English and Scottish Premier Leagues.

He made his debut on 4 May 1991 in a 1–0 home win over Queens Park Rangers in the First Division.

In Stringer's final season as manager, 1991–92, when Norwich reached the FA Cup semi-finals, Sutton gradually broke into the first team.

He made 21 league appearances that season, scoring twice.

He found success in his new position as Norwich spent most of the first season of the new FA Premier League, in 1992–93, as league leaders, before eventually slipping to 3rd place under new manager Mike Walker.

In the autumn of 1993, he was part of the side that eliminated Bayern Munich from the UEFA Cup, while he scored 25 Premier League goals in the 1993/94 season.

After manager Walker went to Everton, in January 1994, and succeeded by assistant John Deehan, Norwich slipped out of the top 5 and finished in the 12th position.

At that time, Sutton was being linked with other clubs, including Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal and Manchester United.

Sutton became the most expensive player in English football in July 1994, when he was transferred from Norwich City to Blackburn Rovers for £5 million.

He won the Premier League in 1995 with Blackburn Rovers and was capped once by England.

He was also known as being one of the foremost exponents of the glancing header.

He scored many goals with this technique which made him particularly effective from set-pieces.

A succession of injuries, combined with a loss of form, saw him making only 13 Premier League appearances during the 1995–96 season and failing to score a single league goal.

Shearer's regular strike partner that season became Mike Newell, but, at the end of the season, both Shearer and Newell departed from the club, leaving Sutton and Kevin Gallacher as Blackburn's only major strikers.

Sutton was involved in a controversial moment towards the end of the 1996–97 season in a league game against Arsenal at Highbury.

Late in the game, with The Gunners leading by a single goal, the ball was kicked out of play by Arsenal to allow an injured teammate to receive treatment.

Under the unwritten sportsmanship rule, Arsenal would expect the ball to be returned to them unhindered.

However, Sutton chased the ball instead of allowing it to be thrown back to Arsenal and won a corner from his efforts, from which Blackburn scored.

At the end of the season, Arsenal missed out on a lucrative place in the Champions League to Newcastle United on goal difference.

Following the incident, Blackburn's interim manager Tony Parkes described Sutton as "a boy who was sometimes a bit dizzy ... a bit silly", stating "It was against the spirit of the game and he should not have done it".

Sutton refused to apologise for his action.

Sutton regained his form over the next three seasons, achieving joint highest goalscoring place in the Premier League in 1997–98, by scoring 18 times.

Although, in 1997/98, Sutton's 18 goals helped Blackburn finish 6th in the League and qualify for the UEFA Cup, he managed just 17 league games and 3 goals the following season, 1998–99, as they were relegated four years after being crowned champions.

Sutton was sold to Chelsea for £10 million after Blackburn's relegation.

His time at Stamford Bridge proved an unhappy one, as he struggled both to live up to the price tag and to adapt to Chelsea's style of play, scoring just one league goal -in the 5–0 win against Manchester United- in 28 appearances, and 3 goals in total, the other 2 coming from one goal against Skonto Riga in a Champions League qualifier, and one against Hull City in the FA Cup.

He failed to even make the bench for the club's FA Cup Final win against Aston Villa.

In July 2000, he was sold to Scottish Premier League side Celtic for £6 million.

Sutton regained his goal-scoring form at Celtic.

In September 2009, Sutton was appointed manager of Lincoln City, but he resigned due to personal reasons twelve months later.

In 2012, he came out of retirement briefly and featured for non-league Wroxham.