Leslie "Les" Ferdinand MBE (born 8 December 1966[1] in Paddington, London) is a former English footballer. He is best known for his time at Queens Park Rangers, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur during which period his powerful and elegant centre forward play and ability in the air resulted in a number of appearances for England. He became the first player to score for 6 different Premier League clubs.

He is the cousin of current Premiership players Rio and Anton Ferdinand and his son Aaron currently plays for Harrow Borough in the Isthmian League. Popularly nicknamed Sir Les, he was made an MBE in the 2005 Queen`s Birthday Honours List.[2]

On 5 November 2008 Ferdinand joined fellow ex-Spur Tim Sherwood on the coaching staff of Tottenham Hotspur, utilising his experience to work with the strikers.

Early career

Ferdinand started his career in non-league football, first at AEL (a KOPA Cypriot team in England) then to Southall then moving to Hayes. He was spotted by Queens Park Rangers and moved there for £15,000.

[edit] QPR

Ferdinand made only a handful of appearances in his early QPR career. He had two loan spells at Brentford and Turkish side Beşiktaş. He began to establish himself at QPR in 1991 and in his first full season in 1992–93, he scored an impressive 24 goals in 42 games. Ferdinand scored 90 goals in 183 games for QPR. He is regarded as one of the finest players to have played for QPR and as such the fans gave him the nickname `Sir Les`, which followed him throughout his career. His departure from QPR in 1995 contributed towards their relegation the following season in 1996, and they have yet to return to the Premier League.

[edit] Newcastle United

Ferdinand was sold to Newcastle in 1995 for £6 million, with Hayes receiving £600,000 due to a sell-on clause agreed following his move to QPR (with the money received Hayes built a function suite and named it `The Ferdinand Suite` in his honour). This was arguably Ferdinand`s most successful club tenure. He scored 29 goals in his first season with Newcastle, and significantly contributed to the side`s getting within touching distance of the Premiership title in the 1995–96 season.

In both of his seasons on Tyneside, Ferdinand collected runners-up medals in the Premier League. In the second season, they had contested a four-horse race with Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool before Manchester United won the title. In the first season, however, Newcastle had led the league by 12 points at one stage, but were overhauled by United in the final three months of the season.

Ferdinand scored 50 goals in only 84 games at Newcastle, forming a successful partnership with Alan Shearer. He was and indeed is still very highly thought of by Newcastle United and received a standing ovation when he came on as a substitute at Alan Shearer`s testimonial and subsequently scored.

Tottenham Hotspur

In 1997 Ferdinand was bought by Tottenham Hotspur, the club he supported as a boy, again for £6 million. Injuries heavily disrupted his first season at the club, but towards the end of the campaign he formed a good partnership with Jürgen Klinsmann, and the pairs` goals saved Spurs from relegation from the Premiership. Ferdinand helped Spurs win the League Cup in 1999, defeating Leicester City 1–0 in the final at Wembley, but injuries restricted him to just 12 goals in his first three seasons at the club.