Football writer Sam Cunningham explores Elliot Anderson's journey from a defining loan spell in League Two to one of the Premier League's most complete midfielders.
Elliot Anderson rose at the back post to head in the winner in one of the most extraordinary games on one of the most extraordinary afternoons in football.
Bristol Rovers had not been in the League Two automatic promotion places all season and on the final day of the 2021/22 season needed to win by five more goals than Northampton Town to overtake them on goal difference.
By half-time, both teams were two ahead, so Bristol Rovers now required five in 45 minutes against Scunthorpe without Northampton scoring.
Then the goals started flying in.
Four goals in 23 minutes put Bristol Rovers on the brink of the unlikeliest result before Anderson headed in the crucial goal with five minutes remaining. Wild fans descended on the pitch. Anderson was mobbed. The referee had to send the players back into the changing room while the pitch was cleared.
Watch: Anderson's late goal v Scunthorpe to secure promotion
The loan spell that shaped his career
That loan to Bristol Rovers, from January to May 2022, proved pivotal in Anderson’s career – transforming him from “the Geordie Maradona”, as he became known at Rovers, to England’s midfield anchor fast becoming one of the world’s leading players in his position.
“Elliot scoring the winner just capped the loan off for me,” says Sam Finley, a midfielder in that Bristol Rovers side.
That they were even in with a chance of promotion was down to the arrival of Anderson, a 19-year-old midfielder, shy but with quiet confidence, on loan from Newcastle United in January.
“I don’t think the team would’ve been promoted without him,” Finley says. “From the very first session we knew he was a player.”
Finley remembers a small-sided game in that session when Anderson shoulder-barged one of the more experienced players off the ball then bent it into the top corner. “We all stood looking at each other like, 'Wow.'”
That would not be the last time they thought that. Anderson arrived as a central midfielder, but Bristol Rovers had a settled midfield three, so manager Joey Barton, desperate to get Anderson in the team, played him on the left wing.
Soon it became a “case of give Elliot the ball – he'll make something happen”, Finley says.
It had already been noticed in the changing room that he had the physique of a man and not a teenager, and his combination of surprising strength and balance made him lethal.
“He’d use his body, he’d let the defenders come in and he was that strong he’d ride tackles or shoulder barge them out the way and his feet were unbelievable,” Finley recalls. “He had great dribbling ability, so he’d just roll them and use his arm to hold them off and dribble through and score.
“He was always cutting inside. He was unbelievable at gaining that yard or bursting past players.”
Early life and youth football
Anderson always possessed strength beyond his years, those who have worked with him say.
Trevor Todd was running an Under-8s indoor three-a-side league at Wallsend Boys Club, in North Tyneside, one of the most successful youth football teams in the country, when he asked Anderson’s dad if his five-year-old wanted to join in.
“Initially l thought he’d struggle due to his small stature, but Elliot was by far the best at three years younger,” Todd says. “What stood out was his decision making and bravery in facing up to bigger boys. At Wallsend l was also coaching his brother Louie’s team and allowed Elliott to participate in the sessions and again he handled everything with ease.”
They immediately put him in the age group above to play his football.
“Elliot was a year younger but more than held his own,” recalls John Forrester, his first coach at Wallsend. “He had that edge to him that made him stand out and loved a tackle.”
Like Finley, Forrester recalls meeting a “very quiet” and “quite shy” child but when it came to the football pitch his actions spoke volumes.
“We rotated the captaincy to help with giving players the opportunity take some responsibility,” Forrester says. “He took it all in his stride.
“He was a tackler and a goal scorer. He had a habit of being in the right place at the right time.”
Wallsend Boys Club has produced almost 100 professional footballers, including Peter Beardsley, Brian Laws and Michael Carrick, and Anderson was set on his way to becoming the next when a few years later Todd, an academy scout for Newcastle, recommended him for their Under-9s.
“l was certain he would do well because he always showed a willingness to learn and apply himself fully to the task no matter whatever it was,” Todd says.
“I’m so pleased for the lad, he’s very level-headed and appears to keep a low profile. Elliot has lovely parents who have quietly supported their son and no doubt are immensely proud of what he has achieved.”
Watch: Anderson's journey with his boyhood club Newcastle
For his part, Anderson has never forgotten Wallsend. When they built a new community hub in 2023, he came to open it.
“As you can imagine, becoming a professional footballer is not a simple process and the vast majority never make it,” says club chairman Steve Dale. “Those who do have normally had more than natural ability, they have had an inner determination, almost bloody mindedness and incredible self-discipline to avoid the normal distractions of progressing from childhood to adulthood.
“Even with all of those ingredients in place you also often have to be in the right place at the right time to seize the rare opportunities when they present themselves.”
Nicknames in the dressing room
Anderson could barely have seized his loan spell at Bristol Rovers more forcibly, scoring seven goals in 21 games – six of them in his last 11. A goal against Harrogate Town was one of the highlights.
“We used to call him the Geordie Maradona because of the way he dribbled and that goal Maradona scored against England,” Finley says. “When we played Harrogate at home he danced through about four or five players and passed the ball into the bottom corner.
Watch: Anderson's solo goal v Harrogate
Billy Elliot, the main character in a film about an 11-year-old from County Durham who becomes a ballerina, was another nickname. “He was from Newcastle and had twinkle toes,” Finley says.
You could already see the close ball control and low centre of gravity that has made Anderson one of the most dominant central midfielders in the game, one who demands the ball in tight spaces or wins it back, shrugs off or sidesteps opponents before passing to a team-mate.
“Playing small-sided games and five-a-sides, you knew he’d always drop in and take on two or three and score,” Finley says. “He had everything.
“He was strong, powerful, he’d burst past you. You just knew if people got tight to him they couldn’t get the ball off him because he was that strong. If you had him trapped in a corner, he’d get out of it.”
A key player for club and country
Anderson failed to establish himself in Newcastle’s first team but quickly flourished after moving to Nottingham Forest in July 2024.
Former Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo decided to build a team around Anderson and team-mate Morgan Gibbs-White.
Nuno’s successor, Ange Postecoglou, also recognised the midfielder's potential. And as a marker of his steep climb, soon his performances piqued the interest of England manager Thomas Tuchel, who has made him a permanent fixture in his midfield.
Two starts, two Player of the Match performances. 🏴
— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) September 10, 2025
Proud of you, Elliot. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/uANguHDsAA
“He is very professional,” Postecoglou said in a press conference. “He looks after himself off the field. He makes sure everything he does is right.
“That shows me that there is even more improvement in him, when you see that kind of mentality. We have to help him do that and the worst thing I could do is put a ceiling on that.”