Mark Draper.

[PeterWithesShin]

I really liked Draper for the first couple of seasons; then he seemed to go off the boil and retreat into a midfield player who just passed sideways most of the time - lost his edge when Little left, I think. His career went downhill fast once he left us.

Remember him scoring a cracker v Peterborough in the League Cup; I was a year into my first journalism job, covering sport for a Peterborough weekly and I was in the press box for the game at VP. In front of me were two reporters from the bigger daily paper in P'Boro. Think it was 0-0 for the opening 20 mins or so. They were getting very smug about Peterborough 'holding mighty Villa'.

Villa won a free-kick about 25 yards out, and Draper went to take it. 'Of course, any Premier League player worth their salt would put this in, easily,' they were saying, no doubt ready for Draper to miss and then for them to be able to scoff about it.

The ball was touched back to Draper, who flicked it into the air and then met it in on the volley, straight in.

'A bit like that, gents?' I said.

Villa won the game 6-0.

That game was crazy, didn't we get 2 penalties and they had a couple of players sent off? I also remember their fans starting to play up a bit as the goals kept going in.

[Deano's Mullet]

Remember his goal at Ipswich? A stunner. Also two goals on Boxing Day one year in a 4-1 demolition of Spurs yet Stan The Undeserving Man got all the headlines for scoring a brace as well. Draper was brilliant in 95/96, decent enough the following year without ever troubling the goalscoring charts and fairly average for the remainder of his career. Winter 1995 he looked a shoe in for the England squad, never got in and never flirted with it again whilst the unfancied Southgate nipped in ahead of him and never looked back

[Brend'Watkins]

If I remember correctly he was in very good form and started to get mentioned as a possible England player.  It all went downhill after that.  My only memory of him is that he was steady player.

[supertom]

If I remember correctly he was in very good form and started to get mentioned as a possible England player.  It all went downhill after that.  My only memory of him is that he was steady player.

Did he not make a squad once (or a provisional squad) along with his mini-me, Alan Wright?

[Mortimer's Bear]

My abiding memory of Mark Drapers Villa career (aside from the stupid blonde hair-do), is somewhat underwhelming.

[Pete3206]

The best game I ever saw him at VP was the 4-4 draw against Leicester. Unfortunately, he was playing for them.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Before he went to Saints we sent him on-loan to Rayo Vallecano. In order to be understood at training he looked-up a few words useful for football in the Spanish dictionary. Cue puzzled bewilderment when he kept shouting at his team mates "Permiso, permiso!" - the word for pass - the permit/license type of pass that is.

LOL seems to be the thickest footballer until Jonathan Woodgate took his crown.

Woodgate you may recall, moved to Real Madrid and was highly rated by their fans but he always seemed to be suffering from a thigh injury. It obviously gave him lots of free time and amazing as it may seem, he was fluent in Castellano.

I always liked Draper, clever footballer when he put his mind to it. As mentioned above, it all started to go wrong for him once he started plating about with his hair colour.

[Grande Pablo]

Draper was 'seeing' Mrs Pablo before I met her in late 1995 for a couple of weeks.  He was a tool, & she was trying to let him down gently.

[geeeenius1971]

I know a man who worked with his brother and everyone says was the better player but Mark had the determination and application to learn when he was younger