Adrian Heath

Last updated : 07 July 2013 By Tony Scholes

Date and Place of Birth

11th January 1961 - NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME

 

Transfers to and from Burnley

from STOKE CITY - 21st August 1992

to SHEFFIELD UNITED - 14th December 1995

from SHEFFIELD UNITED - 7th March 1996 (player/manager)

 

First and Last Burnley Games

STOCKPORT COUNTY (a) - 22nd August 1992

 

WATFORD (a) - 15th October 1996

sub: replaced Paul Barnes

 

Other Clubs

STOKE CITY, EVERTON, ESPANYOL,

ASTON VILLA, MANCHESTER CITY, STOKE CITY

----------------------------------------

SHEFFIELD UNITED

 

 

Burnley Career Stats

 

Season League FA Cup League Cup Others Total
                     
  apps gls apps gls apps gls apps gls apps gls
1992/93 43 20 5 3 0(1) - 1 - 49(1) 23
1993/94 41 9 4 1 3 - 5 - 53 10
1994/95 21(6) - 3 2 4 - - - 28(6) 2
1995/96 5(2) - - - 1 - 1 - 7(2) -
1996/97 0(2) - - - - - - - 0(2) -
                     
Total 110(10) 29 12 6 8(1) - 7 - 137(11) 35

 

Profile by Tony Scholes

 

Having finally escaped the Fourth Division in 1992, manager Jimmy Mullen added to his squad with the signings of John Clayton, Steve Penney and Les Thompson ahead of the 1992/93 season.

It got underway with Penney scoring the only goal in a 1-0 home win against Swansea but both Clayton and Thompson, who made only three appearances each all season, had to wait until game number two to get their debuts.

That was at Stockport, and the day before the game the local press revealed that former Everton championship winner Adrian Heath was training with the club. He was very quickly signed on non-contract forms and made his debut, scoring our goal as we lost 2-1 at Edgeley Park.

Heath was by then aged 31. He'd started his career as a youngster with his home town club Stoke and broke into the first team at the Victoria Ground in the 1978/79 season., playing occasionally, as they won promotion back to the First Division.

He'd played alongside Howard Kendall in that Stoke team, and it was Kendall's departure that led to him getting a permanent place in the team. Kendall had gone to Blackburn as player/manager but he and Heath would work together again on more than one occasion.

Kendall became Everton manager in the summer of 1981 and half way through his first season he returned to Stoke to pay them £700,000 to take Heath to Goodison Park.

They ended the first two seasons in the top half of the table but they were struggling in 1983/84 and it was a Heath goal that turned things round. He scored a late equaliser in a League Cup tie at Oxford and their fortunes changed. They reached the final, won the FA Cup and then in the next three seasons reached two more FA Cup Finals, won the league twice and, in 1985, won the European Cup Winners Cup.

Heath played his part but always had to contend with a strong challenge for a place up front. Graeme Sharp, Andy Gray and Gary Lineker all played there for Everton during this period and often it meant he missed out or played in an attacking midfield role.

Even so, Heath played in the League Cup Final and two of the FA Cup Finals, one as a substitute, but only had a watching brief in the European final with Sharp and Gray in the team.

He went on to play over 200 league games for Everton before signing for Espanyol in late 1988. But he was soon back in England playing for Aston Villa and Manchester City before returning to first club Stoke just ahead of the March transfer deadline in 1992.

Stoke paid £50,000 for him but he was there only until the end of the season and this is when Mullen offered him the opportunity to play for the Clarets.

Having scored in that first game we had a long wait for his next Burnley goal but it eventually came in a 5-2 home win against Fulham in mid-October. There was some relief around the place. Heath had settled in well. He was playing some really good football and had been so unfortunate not to have scored earlier.

Once he got that first home goal the floodgates opened and by the end of the season he'd netted twenty times in the league and added three FA Cup goals to that total in a tie against Sheffield United when he also got himself sent off.

If there was some relief when he scored that first Turf Moor goal there certainly was when he finally penned a contract at Burnley. For much of that season he'd remained as a non-contract player and there were serious concerns amongst supporters that he could leave.

He'd proved to be an excellent signing, playing alongside Mike Conroy who a year earlier had become the first Burnley player to score twenty league goals in a season since Willie Irvine in 1966.

Conroy had gone for the 1993/94 season but Mullen had raided Stoke again for Kevin Russell. The new partner didn't last the season, citing a need to go south when he signed for Bournemouth, and Mullen plugged that gap with the capture of Tony Philliskirk from Peterborough.

David Eyres, a signing from Blackpool in 1993, took over the mantle of goalscorer. Heath got just nine in the league but it was another outstanding season from him as the Clarets marched on to Wembley and promotion with a 2-1 win against Stockport.

The 1994/95 season proved disastrous for us with immediate relegation. Heath started the season in the first team but injury ruled him out of the last third of the season and by the time he played again we were back in what is now League One.

Amidst rumours of a big fall out with manager Mullen, he played only four times before leaving for Sheffield United in December 2005, taking up the role of player/assistant manager when Kendall became manager there.

He wasn't long at Bramall Lane. Three months later he was back at Burnley as player/manager following the sacking of Mullen. He didn't play too often but when he did name himself in the team at Wycombe, a game we lost 4-1, he became the first Burnley manager to play in a league game for us.

He remained with Burnley until the end of the 1996/97 season but made just four more appearances, all as a substitute, before rejoining Kendall at Everton with his mentor having taken over there for a third time.

He's subsequently managed both Sheffield United and Coventry, the latter on a caretaker basis, and coached alongside Peter Reid at Sunderland and Coventry.

But in 2008 he moved to America to become head coach of Austin Aztex, a club owned by Phil Rawlings a director of Stoke. There was a strong link between the two clubs.

In 2011 the franchise was moved from Texas to Florida, and renamed Orlando City. Rawlings is still very much an owner, and is also the president, with  names such as former Burnley director Brendan Flood and agent Gary Mellor listed alongside him as owners.

Heath the player however will be fondly remembered by Burnley fans. For those two seasons between the two promotions, 1992/93 and 1993/94, he was an outstanding player for us and can surely be listed as one of Mullen's most astute signings.