JOE’s forgotten footballers: Chris Bart-Williams

Best remembered for his time at Nottingham Forest, we take a look at the man born in Sierra Leone.

He started his playing career as a 16-year old with Leyton Orient and soon moved on to Sheffield Wednesday (pic below) where he came to the attention of quite a lot of people. Back then, he was an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal and spent four seasons with the Owls before being signed by Frank Clark for Nottingham Forest for the sum of £2.5m. At Forest he evolved into a more defensive midfielder, but still got his fair share of goals. He spent seven years with Forest and became club captain, but in 2001 they ran into financial trouble and tried to offload him to Southampton and Birmingham. He refused to go and was banished to the reserves by their directors. He ended up signing for Charlton Athletic (pic below) and spent two seasons with the London club before signing for Ipswich Town. Following just one season at Portman Road, he decided to chance his luck abroad and signed for APOEL in Cyprus, but spent just one season there too. His final club was in Malta as after Maltese club Marsaxlokk wanted a big name signing following several failed attempts to land Paul Gascoigne, they ended up signing Chris Bart-Williams. He only spent a couple of months there before retiring. An interesting fact about Bart-Williams that you might not have known is that his brother is a professional basketball player who represents Sierra Leone internationally and bizarrely enough, he shares the same name! Chris is now based in the US where he is assistant coach at professional women's football club, SoccerPlus Connecticut.