A Game of Three Halves: The Official Kenny Swain Biography

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His most successful season with the club came in 1976–77, when his strike partnership with Steve Finnieston helped Eddie McCreadie's young side win promotion back to the First Division. Portsmouth and Crewe were the last clubs to figure in an illustrious career that saw him play more than 100 games for five different clubs. Between 2002 and 2004, Swain was Director of Football at Thomas Telford School and scouted for a number of clubs. Swain, who will be 72 next Sunday, primarily played full-back but played both midfield and striker positions during his early playing career which began at Wycombe Wanderers in 1973 and finished at Crewe Alexandra in 1992. Clubs played for: Chelsea, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Portsmouth, West Bromwich Albion, Crewe Alexandra.

These days, Kenny Swain has just taken over from Ken McNaught as the former Aston Villa Players with the club. The underprivileged in the blue corner, only now the support comes from tower blocks, against the privileged in the claret pyjama tops, followed by Royal Sutton Coldfield and Four Oaks. He achieved success later in his career, adding to the league title and European Cup winner's medals at Aston Villa with a Second Division runners-up medal at Portsmouth in 1987, and achieving promotion in third place with Crewe from the Fourth Division in 1989. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.With our high quality and fast digitizing process, we help newspaper archives in converting their physical prints into digital format. He added he has nurtured many of the current England players through the system to provide the core of the squad. The FA reported that as part of their talent identification programme he had a major role in the development of players such as Daniel Sturridge, Ross Barkley, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Phil Foden, Luke Shaw, Trent Alexander Arnold and many more progressing from the England Under-16 level to the senior national team. Kenny, who was born in Birkenhead, made his league debut for Chelsea in 1974 and his best season was 1976-77 when he helped the young side gain promotion back to the old first division. From 2004 he had 12 years as head of England Under-16s followed by a year and a half in as assistant coach to John Peacock with the Under-17s team.

He left Villa in 1982 and had spells with Nottingham Forest, Portsmouth and finally Crewe Alexandra. He also assisted at the Under-18 and Under-19 levels and was part of the Under-20 World Cup finals in Egypt in 2009. Today, Kenny works in the England set-up, heading up the FA's talent ID programme, and has helped develop players such as Michael Owen, Joe Cole and Danny Welbeck.Fans are invited to come along and meet Kenny, who will be happy to sign copies and talk about an illustrious career which included a five-year spell with Villa. Sir Trevor Brooking, as the FA’s Director of Football Development, said that Kenny was a key figure in helping to achieve the new structure at St. He played in every game during the 1986/7 promotion year and was an almost ever present for the first year back in the top flight. With the Under 16s, Kenny coached the side to victories in the Victory Shield nine out of ten years and the Montaigu and Nordic Tournaments.

I love being a part of this club, love being captain, love everything this club stands for both on and off the pitch. Since the photos are old press photographs they may have scratches, lines, or other wears of time, which just underlines the authenticity and age of the photos. All structured data from the main, Property, Lexeme, and EntitySchema namespaces is available under the Creative Commons CC0 License; text in the other namespaces is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. Comics used to feature snotty-nosed kids from back-to-backs taking on and, against all odds, beating posh Henrys who pronounced their 'aitches' and came from homes with inside lavatories. We make sure that all our signed items are either collected at our own signing sessions or through a limited number of trusted partners who we've dealt with over many years and are respected within the industry.

Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too. Swain, 5ft 11 ins, was a striker in those days and he enjoyed a good partnership with Steve Finnieston. Swain did not win any honours at Forest but in 1985 he switched to Portsmouth for three years and added a Second Division runners-up medal in 1987 before achieving promotion with a third-place spot with Crewe in 1989.