Ray Graydon, England football coach: Profile, Career, News & Videos

Ray Graydon is an English former footballer and manager. In a 16-year professional career in the English Football League and North American Soccer League he scored 139 goals in 484 league and cup appearances.

A winger, he began his career at hometown club Bristol Rovers in 1965 and scored 38 goals from 155 league and cup competitions in a six-season stay. He was sold on to Aston Villa for £50,000 in July 1971 and went on to help Villa to win promotion out of the Third Division as champions in 1971–72 and then out of the Second Division in 1974–75. He scored the only goal of the 1975 League Cup final and won the League Cup for a second time in 1977. He was also nominated for the Second Division PFA Team of the Year in 1974–75 and featured on the losing side in the 1972 FA Charity Shield. He was sold on to Coventry City for a fee of £35,000 in 1977 and then moved to the United States to play for the Washington Diplomats in 1978, where he picked up a runners-up medal for the 1978 President's Cup Football Tournament. Later, he returned to England to play for Oxford United and retired in 1981.

Graydon coached at Southampton, Oxford United, Watford, Queens Park Rangers and Port Vale, before he was appointed manager of Walsall in May 1998. He led the club to promotion out of the Second Division in 1998–99 before repeating the feat via the play-offs in 2001. He lost his job in January 2002 and was appointed Bristol Rovers manager two months later. He was sacked in January 2004 and later briefly served Leicester City as a first-team coach. In July 2009, Walsall fans voted to honour him with a star on the Birmingham Walk of Stars.