Marlon Harewood

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Personal information
Marlon Harewood
Image:Marlon Harewood.jpg
Full name	Marlon Harewood
Date of birth	August 25, 1979 (age 27)
Place of birth	Hampstead, London, England
Height	6ft 1in
Nickname	Black Homer Simpson, Vice Head, Crazy Frog
Playing position	Striker
Club information
Current club	West Ham United
Number	10
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1996–2003 1998 1999 2003–present	Nottingham Forest → FC Haka (loan) → Ipswich Town (loan) West Ham United	181 (51) 012 0(3) 006 0(1) 138 (46)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 18:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC). * Appearances (Goals)

Marlon Harewood (born 25 August 1979 in Hampstead, London) is an English footballer of Barbadian descent. Harewood, a striker, currently plays for Premiership club West Ham United, where he wears squad number 10.

Harewood began his career with Nottingham Forest, where he formed a brilliant attacking partnership with close friend David Johnson. They bagged 50 goals between them in the 02-03 season. However, Harewood soon made it clear he wanted to leave and moved to Upton Park in November 2003 for a fee of £500,000 from Nottingham Forest, where he had been playing since 1996. In 1998, while still under contract with Nottingham Forest, he also acquired experience abroad with a successful loan spell at FC Haka of the Finnish Veikkausliiga, winning both the Finnish championship and the Finnish Cup.

A graduate of the Forest youth system, where he was inexplicably known as "Alf", Harewood made his league debut at the City Ground in 1998 and went on to forge a reputation as one of the most lethal strikers in the First Division, scoring over 50 league goals.

The Hampstead born striker caught the eye of West Ham fans when he scored for Forest in an FA Cup Third Round clash at Upton Park on 4 January 2003. He netted 21 goals to fire Paul Hart's Forest into the playoffs for the 2002-03 season. After signing for West Ham, new manager Alan Pardew hoped that the powerful striker could have a similar effect on the Hammers promotion hopes the following season. Harewood was the top scorer for West Ham in 2004-05 with 23 goals in all competitions.

He returned to top flight football following West Ham's playoff victory at the end of the 2004-05 season, and the 2005-06 season saw Marlon spearheading Pardew’s Premiership attack. He scored 14 league goals, including the first top flight hat-trick of the season in a 4-0 home victory against Aston Villa, and also put West Ham in front after just 52 seconds against Manchester United, also at Upton Park. Following a torrid run of results for West Ham, including a defeat to League 1 side Chesterfield, Harewood scored a dramatic last-minute winner against title-hopefuls Arsenal on 5 November 2006. This subsequently resulted in a highly emotional confrontation between the two managers.

Harewood became one of the top scoring strikers of the 2005-2006 season, and after scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup semi-final against Middlesbrough, Harewood responded in saying "I can't really describe how I felt at the time; you can't put something like that into words, it's a chapter in my career that I have dreamed about doing since I was a little kid. After making the big step-up from Nottingham Forest to West Ham, I knew I had to work hard if I wanted to get to where the top strikers in the country were."

In June 2006 Harewood appeared as a guest on Ally McCoist's team on A Question of Sport.

Harewood is married and has two sons, named Pharrell and Theodore.

[edit] Trivia

Harewood is known for his surprising resemblance to Homer Simpson and a Goomba, from Super Mario World. In 2006, West Ham captain Nigel Reo-Coker confirmed that the players often call him this.^{[citation needed]}