Paul Gerrard

Paul William Gerrard (born 22 January 1973 in Heywood, Lancashire), is an English football goalkeeper and coach who is currently player-goalkeeping coach at Oldham Athletic. He is also a former England Under 21 international.

Biography

Oldham

Gerrard started his career as a goalkeeping apprentice at Oldham Athletic. He made his Premiership debut at the age of 19 on 5 December 1992 in a 3-2 defeat at Queens Park Rangers. In all, he made 118 League appearances for The Latics

Everton

Nearly 2 years after Joe Royle had left Oldham for Everton, he returned to buy Gerrard for £1 million in July 1996, He made his debut for Everton as a half-time substitute for Neville Southall in a 7-1 win at home to Southampton on 16 November 1996.

When Royle left Everton, Southall returned as first choice goalkeeper for Everton and Gerrard decided to go on loan to Oxford United in 1997 for regular first team action. However, soon afterwards Howard Kendall took over for his second spell as team manager at Goodison Park and recalled Gerrard from Oxford. Despite this, he only played a small number of games.

In December 2000, he suffered a knee injury in a Premier League match against West Ham United, and sparked a surprise reaction from West Ham striker Paolo Di Canio who spurned the opportunity to score the winning goal in order to attend to the injured Gerrard. This act of sportsmanship saw Di Canio (who had infamously assaulted a referee two years earlier) awarded with the FIFA fair play...
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