Gary Peters (footballer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Gary Peters
Personal information
Full name Gary David Peters
Date of birth August 3, 1954 (1954-08-03) (age 53)
Place of birth    Carshalton, England
Height 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)
Playing position Defender
Club information
Current club Shrewsbury Town
Youth clubs
Aldershot
Senior clubs1
Years Club App (Gls)*
1975-1979
1979-1982
1982-1984
1984-1985
1985-1988
1988-1990
Reading
Fulham
Wimbledon
Aldershot
Reading
Fulham
156 0(7)
064 0(2)
083 0(7)
017 0(1)
100 0(4)
011 0(2)   
Teams managed
1994-1998
2003
2004-
Preston North End
Exeter City
Shrewsbury Town

1 Senior club appearances and goals
counted for the domestic league only.
* Appearances (Goals)

Gary Peters (born 3 August 1954 in Carshalton, Sutton, Greater London) is a former professional footballer and now team manager. He is currently manager of Shrewsbury Town in the (English) "League Two" (England’s fourth tier).

Contents

A moderately successful playing career as a defender included spells at Aldershot (twice), Reading (twice), Fulham (twice) and Wimbledon. Originally rejected as a trainee at Aldershot, Peters began his career at Southern League Guildford City before moving on to Reading as a right-back in 1975, winning promotion to Division 3 in his first season. After failing to agree terms on a contract extension, Peters left the club in 1978, having made 156 appearances.

A Football League tribunal decided upon a transfer fee of £25,000 as Peters moved to Fulham. After 29012 appearances for the club, Peters then joined Wimbledon, who had spent the previous four years moving between the third and fourth divisions, after being elected in to the Football League (Div. 4) in 1977. In his first full season for ‘The Dons’ (1982-83) Peters helped the club to promotion as Fourth Division champions. The following year Wimbledon, with Peters as club captain, won promotion again and reached Division Two. He spent a total of his two seasons with the club.

Peters rejoined Aldershot in 1984, where he played in central defence. He made only 23 appearances for ‘The Shots’ and rejoined Reading for 1985-86. Reading clinched promotion to Division Two that season. Peters made nearly a hundred appearances for ‘The Royals’ in his second spell, where he also coached the youth team. After returning to Fulham, Peters ended his playing career in 1990.

Following his retirement as player, Peters took on roles as assistant manager at Fulham, Cambridge and Preston North End. After the departure of John Beck in late 1993-94, Peters was promoted to manager at Preston, who at the time were 3rd from bottom of Division Three (tier 4 in England). Under Beck, Preston had played the long-ball system, but with Peters in charge the team played a more attractive passing game. He also changed their fortunes, as Preston won promotion to Division Two in 1996. During his time at Preston, Peters brought in players such as David Beckham (on loan) and Jon Macken. In 1997 he sold Kevin Kilbane for a club record fee of £1.2m. Jon Macken would eventually be sold by the club for another record, £5m, after scoring more than 70 goals for the club. In early 1998, with Preston sinking back towards Division Three, and having finished fifteenth two years running, Peters resigned. David Moyes was promoted to become Preston's next manager. A month later, after considering his future, Peters rejoined Preston as the club's Centre of Excellence Manager. He set about developing the club's Centre of Excellence, nurturing the talents of local 9-16-year-olds. Recent graduates of the Preston academy include Paul McKenna and Andrew Lonergan. But with the Centre of Excellence ticking over, Preston chose to make Peters redundant, in a cost-cutting measure.

Exeter City quickly secured his services and issued him with the challenge, with just 13 matches of the 2002-03 season remaining, of preserving their league status. Peters lost this challenge, but Exeter lost only three of those 13 games. With the club in financial turmoil, the Chairman and Vice-Chairman both resigned after they had been arrested as part of an investigation of club finances. Possibly facing a large points penalty for going into administration, having to release a large number of the playing staff and being unable to sign any new players, Peters resigned four days later. Peters joined Everton, where David Moyes was manager, as a scout.

In November 2004, Peters took over the reins at Shrewsbury Town. The club had been promoted out of the Football Conference in the summer of 2004 under Jimmy Quinn but were struggling in the newly-titled "League Two", and had been knocked out of the FA Cup by non league Histon.

Peters appointed the much-travelled Mick Wadsworth as his assistant in January 2005, and Shrewsbury finished 21st out of 24 that season, 11 points above the relegated Kidderminster. Going into the 2005-06 season, Shrewsbury were favourites for relegation, and after a poor start to the season it looked a likelyhood. But Peters turned Shrewsbury's fortunes upwards, with the club even knocking Football League Championship club Brighton out of the League Cup and taking Sheffield United, also of the Championship, to a penalty shootout in the same competition. Towards the end of the season, a consistently good run of results gave Town a chance of reaching the playoffs, though the club failed to climb as high as seventh, eventually finishing tenth.

Despite being linked with the vacant managerial post at League One side, Tranmere Rovers, on May 17, 2006 Peters agreed a two year extension to his contract, which will keep him at the club until the end of the 2008-09 season. In 2006-07, Peters took Shrewsbury to the play-off final at the new Wembley Stadium, knocking out the highly fancied Milton Keynes Dons, but Town lost to Bristol Rovers and so will remain in League Two in 2007-08. The club will also move from Gay Meadow to the New Meadow at the start of the 2007-08 season.

(Correct as of 14 March 2007)

Gary Peters League Cups/Playoffs Total
Club Season Position Played Won Drew Lost Played Won Drew Lost Played Won Drew Lost
Preston
North
End
1994-95 4th in Div.3 (IV) 25 15 8 2 4 0 1 3 29 15 9 5
1995-96 1st in Div. 3 (IV) 46 23 17 6 4 1 1 2 50 24 18 8
1996-97 15th in Div. 2 (III) 46 18 7 21 6 2 2 2 52 20 9 23
1997-98 Did Not Finish 21 8 4 9 7 5 1 1 28 13 5 10
December 1994 - January 1998 138 64 36 38 21 8 5 8 159 72 41 46
Exeter City 2002-03 23rd in Div. 3 (IV) 13 5 5 3 - - - - 13 5 5 3
February - May 2003 13 5 5 3 - - - - 13 5 5 3
Shrewsbury
Town
2004-05 21st in Lge.Two (IV) 29 11 10 8 - - - - 29 11 10 8
2005-06 10th in Lge.Two (IV) 46 16 13 17 5 2 1 2 51 18 14 19
2006-07 7th in Lge.Two (IV) 33 12 13 8 7 3 1 3 39 15 14 11
November 2004 - present 108 39 36 33 12 5 2 5 120 44 38 38
Total 259 108 77 74 33 13 7 13 292 121 84 87

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.