Total Tranmere .co.uk

At the age of 27, Chris Greenacre has had only a small number of permanent clubs and a large amount of his career has been spent on loan at a number of different clubs.  Excluding a

successful couple of seasons at Mansfield he has often struggled to find goalscoring form although admittedly his often short loan spells have not helped his cause.

Greenacre joined Manchester City as a trainee at the start of the 1995-96 season but over the next five years he spent more time playing on loan at other clubs than he did playing for the club to which he actually belonged.  After two years as a reserve at Manchester City, he went out on loan twice during the 1997-98 season firstly to Cardiff City and then to Blackpool later in the season.

The 1998-99 season again saw him go out on loan twice, this time to Scarborough and then to Northampton.  His fifth spell on loan from Manchester City, which saw him go to Mansfield Town, eventually earned him a permanent move there and resulted in the most prolific spell of his career.  He scored 5 goals in 12 appearances whilst on loan for the Stags  and eventually moved there on a free in January 2000.

There he scored 53 goals in 120 appearances for Mansfield over the next two and a half years including a debut goal in a 3-1 win against Southend.  In 2002, Greenacre moved to Stoke on a free transfer and despite 51 appearances he scored just 9 goals as he was also hit by injuries.  After netting a hat-trick on his Stoke debut in a friendly, he then got injured in the next friendly against West Brom and was out until the Autumn – a disastrous start to his career at the Britannia Stadium.

When he did return to the squad he had a spell in the side playing upfront alongside Chris Iwelumo but the following season the arrivals of Gifton Noel-Williams, Carl Asaba and ultimately Ade Akinbiyi saw Greenacre’s chances in the first team limited despite scoring on the opening day of the season.  During his later time at the club, Manager Tony Pulis had been playing Greenacre out of position in wide midfield or simply coming off the bench.

He was released by Stoke in May 2005 and had been interesting Southend but this weeks the Shrimpers announced that they would not be pursuing their interest because Greenacre’s wage demands were too high.

So is Greenacre the man for Tranmere?  You can draw your own conclusions and discuss them on the Message Board but it seems that given a decent run in the side and playing in a striking position Chris Greenacre is more than capable of scoring goals but up to now he is yet to have that kind of run outside of his time at Mansfield.  This has contributed to what on the surface seems to be a relatively poor goalscoring record.

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