CHRIS IWELUMO was a promotion-winner with Brighton and Wolves, helping the Seagulls to third tier play-off final success in 2004 and scoring 14 league goals when the Molineux side won the Championship in 2009.
They were two of five promotions he was part of in a remarkable 18-year, 18-club career.
I was at Saltergate on 16 March 2004 when the 6’3” Scot rifled home a 30-yard shot on his debut to extend Albion’s lead to 2-0 over Chesterfield, adding to Guy Butters’ 49th-minute opener.
He’d arrived on loan from Stoke City to replace Leicester loanee Trevor Benjamin, who manager Mark McGhee had hoped to keep until the end of the season, but the terms of his deal didn’t extend to the play-offs.
After that great start against the Spireites, Iwelumo was also on target in home wins over his future employer Colchester United (2-1) and Hartlepool United (2-0) and he got the opener in a 2-0 win at Wrexham.
When Albion did indeed reach the play-offs, it was Danny Coles’ foul on Iwelumo as he charged into the penalty area at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, that earned the penalty from which Leon Knight scored the only goal of the final.
Released by Stoke at the end of the season, his four goals in 13 games for the Seagulls resulted in the offer of a two-year contract to stay in Sussex, but the deal was never signed.
“I loved it there, I absolutely loved it,” Iwelumo told Spencer Vignes, in a matchday programme interview. “I think everyone knew I loved it there and maybe that was used against me contract-wise.
“I was devastated at the time because the whole club was perfect for me,” he said.
The sticking point was Iwelumo’s request for relocation expenses; house prices in Sussex being a lot higher than in the Potteries. Manager McGhee was holidaying in America and not contactable, and, during the impasse, German side Alemannia Aachen steamed in and offered the Scotsman the chance to play UEFA Cup football, which he snapped up.
That adventure didn’t last long, though, and he was back in England lining up for League One Colchester for the 2005-06 season and he top-scored with 19 goals as they were promoted in second place behind Southend United. At the higher level, he bagged 18 before moving on and spending a season at Charlton Athletic, where he scored 10 in a mid-table finish.
He remained in the Championship when, as he was about to turn 30, he moved on to Wolves under Mick McCarthy. On signing him, McCarthy said: “I’m delighted. He adds a physical presence and he’s scored goals. His experience will help. He’s a good character and while it’s nice to have youth and desire it’s important to have that experience.”
Iwelumo certainly repaid that faith quickly, scoring 15 goals in his first 16 games. He scored twice on his full debut in the League Cup against Accrington Stanley and twice more on his first league start against Sheffield Wednesday four days later.
But it was a September 2008 game against Preston in which he scored a hat-trick – an overhead kick, a close-range finish and a penalty – but was also sent off that was his favourite Wolves memory.
The dismissal came after a clash with Sean St Ledger, who he shared an agent with at the time, and even though St Ledger joined him in the ref’s room after the game to say it was all accidental, Iwelumo was banned for three games.
Within a month, an unbelievable miss after he’d gone on a substitute to make his Scotland international debut in a World Cup qualifier on 11 October 2008, went down in footballing history. The Daily Record reported: “On his debut in a 0-0 draw v Norway at Hampden, he missed from two yards out. Manager George Burley turned away in disbelief.”
A reflective Iwelumo told the Terrace Scottish Football podcast years later: “That miss against Norway was a low which ultimately, I like to think, represented a bump in the road of an otherwise successful journey through professional football lasting over two decades.”
Back at Wolves, he only added four more goals after his early season burst and a medial ligament injury curtailed his involvement as the Black Country side went up to the Premier League as champions.
His Premier League appearances for Wolves only amounted to 15 because his start was delayed after breaking his metatarsal on a pre-season tour of Australia, plus competition arrived in the shape of Kevin Doyle, a club record signing.
He had a loan spell at Bristol City looking for game time after another spell out injured, and in June 2010 he was on the move again.
Iwelumo has been asked several times about how things subsequently panned out and in one interview he admitted: “I always go through life saying not to have regrets – only regret the things you don’t do – but my own regret in football is that I left Wolves.”
He was faced with the dilemma of only occasional involvement at Premier League Wolves or a regular playing slot on a three-year contract at then-Championship Burnley under Brian Laws.
“The regret is whether I should have stayed and fought for my place at Wolves,” he told Paul Berry, of the Express and Star in April 2022. “Maybe it would have been different, but at the same time I had a family to support and had been offered three years at a good club on the same money as the year I had remaining at Wolves, in a league where I knew I could still do well.
“I loved my time at Wolves though, and the group of players and staff at that time were unbelievable.”
Born in Coatbridge, Scotland, on 1 August 1978 of a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, Iwelumo joined St Mirren as a youngster, and worked his way through the youth ranks before heading to Denmark and spending two years at Aarhus Fremad.
It was from there that he joined Stoke in 2000. His four-year stay on their books was the longest spell at any of his clubs, although he had three loan spells away, as well as his stint at Brighton he’d previously been to York City and Cheltenham Town.
But he was part of the Stoke side who beat Steve Coppell’s Brentford 2-0 in the League One play-off final in Cardiff in 2002. Brentford included Ivar Ingimarsson, Lloyd Owusu and Steve Sidwell, with Mark McCammon a sub.
Proud Preston must have had nightmares facing Iwelumo because after he’d got that Wolves hat-trick against them, he repeated the feat for Burnley in a 4-3 Lancashire derby win in 2010.
A change in management at Turf Moor brought his time there to a premature end; new boss Eddie Howe preferred Martin Paterson and Charlie Austin when they were fit. Next stop for Iwelumo was Watford, managed at the time by subsequent Burnley boss Sean Dyche.
By then he was 32 and in his first season he played 39 games but managed only three goals, enduring a five-month barren spell in front of goal. The following season he played just eight times for the Hornets and was sent on loan to two League One sides, Notts County and Oldham Athletic, only managing one goal in a total of 14 games at that level.
At Oldham, Iwelumo found himself playing under a manager – and a former Bristol City teammate – who was three years younger. Lee Johnson, at 31, had become the youngest permanent manager in English football in 2013 when he was appointed by the League One Latics.
“Chris actually wanted the job as well when I went to Oldham, so we were having discussions about the job and the club,” Johnson told The Athletic. “One of my first conversations with Chris — remembering he was my friend and helped me get the job — was literally to say: ‘Listen mate, I think your legs have gone, I’m not going to play you’.
“He was saying, ‘This guy has got a bit of b******s to tell me that’. I asked him to effectively be one of my assistants, still come on, still make a difference. He did that fantastically well. That was important. I had to get him onside.”
On his release from Watford, he once again linked up with Brian Laws, who in the 2013-14 season was managing League Two Scunthorpe United. Iwelumo scored twice in 14 games for the Iron in the first half of that season, and looked back on that time in an interview with scunthorpe-united.co.uk, describing how that spell had him making a five-hour round trip from his Midlands home each day.
“There was a lot of things going on at that time, personally as well. I was going through a divorce and that took priority over football to be honest. Understandably, it wasn’t a successful time, or a great time in my career. I was just disappointed that Scunthorpe fans didn’t see the Chris Iwelumo that a lot of other clubs saw. The divorce lasted for about two years and I retired two months after that. “
His last two clubs were Scottish Premiership St Johnstone, where he played eight matches, and English Conference Premier Chester, where he turned out 10 times.
It was some career for a player who’d had an operation at 18 and been told he’d only play football until he was 26 or 27. “I retired when I was 36, but when I signed my contract with Charlton turning 29, I knew I was on borrowed time,” he said. “I had ten operations on my knee in total, and I knew any years beyond that was a blessing.”
Football supporters hadn’t seen or heard the last of him either because he has become a regular pundit on televised football and a familiar voice on talkSPORT.
He earned a Professional Sports Writing and Broadcasting degree at Staffordshire University, set up a property company with a close friend, worked on a weekly podcast with Wolves and also worked with Stoke City.
“It’s been hard, but it’s been great,” he said. “I’m still a little bit envious of those guys who go into jobs and work 9-5 because they know what they’re doing every day. The property portfolio gives me a lot of free time to do what I want to do, including the media stuff. It’s very different week-to-week.”
In parallel lines 