Current club: Manchester City
Gareth, who usually plays as a defensive midfielder, was born in Sussex and played for Brighton & Hove Albion before becoming a trainee with Aston Villa. He featured twice for Villa in the Premier League at the end of the 1997-98 season when he was 17.
He became a regular first-team player in the following season, scoring twice in 32 Premier League games, and kept his place until a controversial move to Manchester City in the summer of 2009.
For England he captained the U18s and made a colossal 27 appearances for the Under-21s, equalling Jamie Carragher’s then all-time record.
Towards the end of the 1999-2000 campaign, when Gareth was still only 19, he played for Howard Wilkinson’s Under-21s in a UEFA Championship qualifying play-off against Yugoslavia and then made two substitute appearances for Kevin Keegan’s senior team, picking up his first full cap against Ukraine in a Wembley friendly on 31 May 2000.
He began the 2007-08 season with just nine caps but was then regularly included in the team by Steve McClaren and then Fabio Capello, and his total quickly went over the 30 mark. He also scored in Trinidad and Kazakhstan.
