Dean Saunders

Saunders scored 23 goals in all competitions, though just 10 of these were the league where the club only managed a sixth-place finish - one of their lowest positions since their current top flight tenure began in 1962.

Dean Nicholas Saunders (born 21 June 1964) is a Welsh football manager and former professional footballer.

Saunders was born in Swansea and began his career with Swansea City, where his father Roy had been a player and coach, signing as an apprentice on leaving school in 1980.

As a player, he was a striker in a career which lasted from 1982 until 2001.

He turned professional in the summer of 1982, after Swansea had finished sixth in their debut season as a First Division club.

Swansea were relegated in 1982–83, and Saunders made his debut in the 1983–84 season.

A goalless four-game loan spell at local rivals Cardiff City also came in 1984–85, before he signed for Second Division club Brighton & Hove Albion on a free transfer on 7 August 1985.

The striker was a success at the Goldstone Ground, scoring 14 league goals in his first season.

He was capped 75 times at senior level for Wales between 1986 and 2001, scoring 22 times, making him one of the nation's highest-scoring and most-capped players of all time, although Wales never qualified for any major international competitions while Saunders was playing for them.

He scored six goals from 30 league games in 1986–87 before a £60,000 move took him to the First Division with Oxford United.

He was an instant success as his six goals in the final 12 league games secured First Division survival.

He scored 12 goals in 37 games during the 1987–88 season (during which Maurice Evans was dismissed as manager and replaced by Mark Lawrenson) but it was not enough to prevent Oxford from going down in bottom place after three seasons in the top flight.

He began the 1988–89 season still in the Second Division, with manager Lawrenson and chairman Kevin Maxwell agreeing that they would only sell Saunders if Oxford failed to win promotion at the end of the season.

However, he was sold to Derby County for £1 million on 28 October 1988, prompting Lawrenson to resign in protest over Saunders' sale.

Saunders made his Derby County debut on 29 October 1988 against Wimbledon in a First Division fixture at the Baseball Ground in which he scored twice.

In his first season at his new club he scored 14 goals in 30 games to help Derby finish fifth in the 1988–89 First Division table — their highest finish since they were league champions in 1975 — but they were unable to compete in the UEFA Cup due to the ban on English teams in European competition following the Heysel Disaster of 1985.

He added 11 league goals to his name in the 1989–90, but Derby slumped to 16th place.

He played for Liverpool and Aston Villa in the 1990s, and set a new British transfer record when he joined the former from Derby County.

He began at his hometown club Swansea City before also playing for Brighton, Oxford United, Bradford City, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield United as well as spells at Galatasaray and Benfica.

During the 1990–91 season he netted 17 league goals but Derby still went down in bottom place with just five league wins all season.

Their relegation saw most of the country's top clubs queue up in their bid to capture Saunders' services, and Everton were favourites to sign him, and there were also approaches from Aston Villa's new manager Ron Atkinson, and Nottingham Forest's Brian Clough.

Saunders ended up at Liverpool, who paid a then English record fee of £2.9 million for Saunders on 19 July 1991 to make him Ian Rush's new strike-partner following the departures of David Speedie and Peter Beardsley.

In 1991–92, Saunders partnered Rush – who was also his strike partner for Wales – in attack, backed by young Steve McManaman which saw the club win the FA Cup for the fifth time in its history in manager Graeme Souness' first full season in charge.

He became the first Liverpool player to score four goals in a European fixture when he did so during a 6–1 home win over Kuusysi Lahti in the UEFA Cup first round first leg on 18 September 1991 that was their first European fixture after their six-year ban.

He also scored twice against FC Tirol in the third round first leg and a hat-trick in the return game.

Saunders finished as the club's top scorer for the 1991-1992 season.

On 10 September 1992, Saunders became Aston Villa's record signing in a £2.5 million deal that reunited him with former Liverpool players Steve Staunton and Ray Houghton at Villa Park.

He managed six goals in his first four league games including two on his home debut against the club who had sold him; he also scored the winning goal at Anfield later in the season.

Here, he developed a strong partnership with Dalian Atkinson until the latter suffered an injury midway through the season.

Linking up with Dwight Yorke, Saunders continued scoring as Villa challenged for the inaugural Premier League title but the team ultimately finished runners-up behind Manchester United.

He ended the campaign with 16 goals in total with 12 in the league, one being a 35-yard strike against Ipswich.

Saunders and Villa found goals harder to come by in the league in the following season and he only managed 10, three coming from hat-trick scored against Swindon.

He did however manage six more in cup competitions, with his goals against Birmingham City and Tranmere helping Aston Villa reach the 1994 League Cup Final where they beat Manchester United 3–1, as Saunders scored twice to end Villa's 12-year wait for a major trophy.

Despite his best goalscoring season for the club with 17 goals, the 1994–95 season saw Villa finish only one place short of relegation — two years after they had come one place short of the league title.

At one stage during the campaign Saunders recorded a run of seven goals in six games, including braces against Wimbledon in a 7–1 victory, and Sheffield Wednesday.

His final Villa goal came against Leicester City and despite not scoring in his final twelve appearances for the club he was named the Supporters' Player of the Year.

As part of new Villa manager Brian Little's rebuilding programme, which resulted in many players of the Ron Atkinson era being sold, Saunders was off-loaded to Turkish club Galatasaray on 1 July 1995 for £2.35 million (a large sum for a 31-year-old player), where he reunited with his former Liverpool manager Graeme Souness.

In fact, according to Shelley Webb's book Footballers' Wives Tell Their Tales, the first Saunders' wife Helen knew of the move was when she went to Turkey with him one weekend, to find that by Monday he had signed for the Istanbul club and this was her new home.

In the 1996 Turkish Cup final, Saunders scored the only goal of the first-leg before scoring an equalising goal in extra-time of the away leg against rivals Fenerbahçe to win the cup for Gala.

Following his retirement from playing in 2001, he entered football coaching and then management, firstly of Wrexham and since then of Doncaster Rovers, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Crawley Town and Chesterfield.