In the latest in our Forgotten Footballer series, we look at a man with the most famous buck-toothed grin since Ronaldinho, former Manchester United winger Luke Chadwick.
Given their current plight, Manchester United fans have had a lot of reasons to be nostalgic about better times of late and Gary Neville delivered a real blast from the past when discussing the demise of his current club on Monday Night Football earlier this week.
Commenting on the lack of risk in United’s approach compared to days gone by, Neville and Jamie Carragher discussed an incident in a league game with Liverpool at Old Trafford in 2000 when a United player was sent off for bringing down Vladimir Smicer as the last man as United chased the game in the dying stages. That player? One Luke Chadwick, who won a league medal with the Red Devils that season in what was the highlight of a brief senior career at Old Trafford.
To call Chadwick forgotten is slightly harsh as he is still playing and playing well for MK Dons in League One, but it seems an age since he wore a United shirt and shared a dressing room with some of the most decorated players in Premier League history.
Chadwick came through the youth system at Manchester United and made his senior debut in 1999 in the league cup, as was the case with a lot of young players in the Ferguson era. Also, like a lot of young players under Ferguson’s tutelage, he went out on loan to Belgian side Royal Antwerp for the entire 1999/00 season and didn’t do his prospects any harm, scoring seven times in 36 appearances.
When he returned, Fergie was happy to thrust him into the first team and it was then that most United supporters and football fans in general got their first sight of one of the most frail-looking players ever to play in the Premier League.
Bandy-legged and looking like he was on his way to his first ever teenage disco, Chadwick, in his appearance at least, truly looked like a boy amongst men in those early days. Never has a player failed more spectacularly to fill out a jersey than Chadwick did back then; what he wouldn’t have given for the skin-tight numbers so common in the GAA these days.
That said, he didn’t do too bad when he got the chance. He made 16 Premier League appearances in the 2000/01 season, scored twice and claimed his first and only league winner’s medal at the end of that campaign.
Chadwick was still only 20 at the end of that campaign but opportunities at United diminished after that season. After only eight league appearances the following campaign, he was shipped off on loan to Reading and then Burnley and eventually joined West Ham on a free transfer before the 2004/05 season.
West Ham didn’t quite work out for the winger and he ended up on loan at Stoke one season after joining the Hammers before making the move permanent in January 2006. Chadwick scored the goal of the round in the fourth round of the FA Cup soon into his Stoke career (see below) but it went downhill from there on, in one instance fairly rapidly as he fainted during a clash with Southend on the opening day of the 2006/07 season, with dehydration later cited as the reason behind it.
After just over 50 appearances for Stoke, Chadwick then joined Norwich on loan and subsequently on a permanent basis but injury dogged his time at Carrow Road and he only played 18 times in two seasons, during which time he joined the MK Dons, again on loan, in late 2008.
On New Year’s Day 2009, the move was made permanent and Chadwick finally achieved some form of stability for the first time in his career, having played nearly 200 games for the club since, scoring 20 goals in the process.
Chadwick in action for the MK Dons earlier this year
Since the beginning of the 2009/10 season, Chadwick has played over 40 games a season for the MK Dons and was named their Player of the Season that year and the year after too. So far this campaign, Chadwick has played 17 games and managed just the one goal but he has been out with a foot injury for over a month.
Just turned 33, he’s not going anywhere for a while having signed a deal earlier this year that will keep him at the MK Dons until 2015 and if he does hang up the boots at that stage, he can certainly claim that his career was eventful if nothing else.
