Playing Career
A powerfully-built and prolific goalscoring inside-forward, Whittingham started out with amateur side Goldenhill Wanderers, before signing for Stoke and later Crewe Alexandra.
He later moved on to Blackpool, where he stayed for just a year. He scored 28 goals in 53 league games, becoming the club's top goalscorer over two terms (he achieved the feat in the latter season despite his leaving Bloomfield Road midway through the campaign). In January 1909, he joined First Division side Bradford City, where he equalled a then-club-record 21 league goals during the 1909–10 season. His performances at Valley Parade earned him a move to David Calderhead's relegation threatened Chelsea — for a fee of £1,300.
Whittingham arrived too late to save the club from relegation into the Second Division, but he scored prolifically during the next two seasons, hitting 30 goals in his first full season with Chelsea, though they narrowly missed out on promotion, finishing third. His 26 goals in 1911–12, almost half of the club's season total, played a big part in their winning promotion back to the First Division. He scored 12 goals in 1912–13 to become the club's top-scorer for a third consecutive season. He left Stamford Bridge in 1913 and had a stint with South Shields before the First World War broke out.
During the war he guested for Stoke, where he became a prolific scorer hitting 26 in 1915–16, 22 in 1916–17, 15 in 1917–18 and 23 in 1918–19. He also guested for Fulham and Port Vale. He returned to Chelsea after the war, playing six more games in the 1919–20 season, finishing his time with the club with a record of 80 goals from 129 league and FA Cup games. He then moved to Stoke again, where he scored eight goals in 18 Second Division games in another brief spell at the Victoria Ground. His goal tally included one against rivals Port Vale in a 3–0 win at The Old Recreation Ground.
Whittingham later had spells with Macclesfield, Scunthorpe United, Wrexham and Goldenhill Wanderers. Despite his prolific goalscoring record, Whittingham was never capped for England.
Read more about this topic: Bob Whittingham
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or career:
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)