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Date and Place of Birth 26th August 1976 - BIRKENHEAD
Transfers to and from Burnley from STOCKPORT COUNTY - 20th November 2000 (£1 million) to LEEDS UNITED - 24th March 2005 (£50,000)
First and Last Burnley Games NORWICH CITY (h) - 21st November 2000 sub: replaced Lee Briscoe
SHEFFIELD UNITED (a) - 19th March 2005 sub: replaced John Oster
Other Clubs TRANMERE ROVERS, BRADFORD CITY (loan), NOTTM FOREST, WEST HAM UNITED (loan), STOCKPORT COUNTY ---------------------------------------- LEEDS UNITED, HARTLEPOOL UNITED, TRANMERE ROVERS, ROTHERHAM UNITED |
Burnley Career Stats
| Season | League | FA Cup | League Cup | Others | Total | |||||
| apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | apps | gls | |
| 2000/01 | 26(1) | 5 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - | 28(1) | 6 |
| 2001/02 | 41(5) | 11 | 2 | 3 | 0(1) | - | - | - | 43(6) | 14 |
| 2002/03 | 35(9) | 8 | 6 | 3 | 2 | - | - | - | 43(9) | 11 |
| 2003/04 | 38(2) | 9 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | - | - | 43(2) | 13 |
| 2004/05 | 30(5) | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | - | - | - | 36(5) | 6 |
| Total | 170(22) | 37 | 17 | 12 | 6(1) | 1 | - | - | 193(23) | 50 |
Profile by Tony Scholes
Ian Moore started his career at Tranmere where his dad Ronnie had enjoyed a successful career during the 1970s as a goalscoring striker after converting from a central defender.
And it really did look as though Ian was going to follow in dad's footsteps when he won an early place in the first team. He spent a short period with Bradford City to gain some experience but by the time he moved on from Prenton Park on a permanent basis a big career was expected.
He'd played over 50 games for the Wirral club and such was his form that he'd represented England at every level from youth to Under-21. Some of the top clubs were interested in him and in March 1997, at the age of 21, he signed for Nottingham Forest in a £1 million deal.
He arrived five days after they'd paid Celtic £4.5 million for Pierre Van Hooijdonk. Things didn't work out for him, he'd been signed by Stuart Pearce but shortly after that Dave Bassett took over and Moore struggled to get in the team.
During his time at Forest he played just fifteen times and scored just the one goal. He had a loan at West Ham but made just one substitute appearance. Such was his limited opportunity that just before the start of the 1998/99 season he was on the move again, just seventeen months after signing for Forest.
This time his destination was Stockport in deal worth £800,000. He proved popular at Stockport where he scored a goal every four and a half games and his return to form alerted a number of other clubs.
Stockport were ready to sell but they wanted £2 million for him. However, not club was ready to pay that and eventually they had to accept an offer of just a million. He looked all set to sign for Norwich but at the eleventh hour he signed for Burnley.
We'd made an offer some weeks earlier that had been rejected and it looked as though our interest was at an end, but Ian Moore became our first ever million pound signing when he became a Claret in November 2000 on a four and a half year contract.
He made his debut as a substitute the day after, ironically against Norwich, coming on for Lee Briscoe and his first Burnley goal was at Preston, a screamer in a game we lost 2-1.
Moore had been signed to replace Andy Payton but in truth he didn't ever have the ability to score goals at anything like the rate that Payts did. Despite that he was very popular in the Burnley side, particularly during the first two seasons when we challenged for promotion.
He formed a partnership with Gareth Taylor for much of that time and the 2001/02 season, when we missed the play offs by one goal, proved to be his most productive with eleven league goals.
Although he had lean spells in the league he would come alive in the FA Cup and his goalscoring record in the cups would always be good. He got his only Burnley hat trick in an FA Cup tie against Canvey Island and also hit two goals in cup games on a number of occasions including games against Mansfield and Bournemouth.
A mainstay during Stan Ternent's time as manager, Moore suffered an injury in pre-season just after Steve Cotterill had taken over. Whether he never fully recovered I don't know but he didn't seem to have the same pace and Cotterill, opting for a 4-5-1 formation with Blake up front, used him mainly on the right hand side.
His dad spoke out at the time saying 'Our Ian' should play up front because he was a goalscorer but it was inevitable that his time at Burnley would end when his contract finished at the end of the 2004/05 season. In the end he left earlier, signing for Leeds for £50,000 in March.
He'd scored 37 goals for the Clarets in 192 league appearances, his overall record enhanced by the 13 goals he scored in 20 cup ties bringing his total of Burnley goals to 50. The last of those goals came in a 2-0 win at Coventry with the other Burnley goal coming from John Oster.
That move to Leeds saw him alongside Blake again but under manager Kevin Blackwell he hardly played. Things did improve however when Dennis Wise took over but when the Bates/Wise combination did football a massive favour and got Leeds relegated it was time for Moore to move on again when his contract wasn't renewed.
He signed for Hartlepool and was playing well for them but during his first season there he asked for a move because of the problem commuting from his home in Cheshire. Now his dad had always said he'd love to have him in his team and finally he did just that.
By now Ronnie was manager at Tranmere and he took son Ian back to his first club. That was on the last day of the January transfer window in 2008 and he settled back in and started scoring goals at one in four games again.
His dad left in the summer of 2009 but Ian remained at Tranmere under new boss John Barnes, albeit with a new look, or should we say new name. Ahead of the 2009/10 season he married his partner and they chose to change their names to include both surnames. So from August 2009 he is called Ian Thomas-Moore.
I'm not sure how that would have fit into the Ian Moore-Moore-Moore chant had he still been with the Clarets.
Many players become more popular with Burnley fans once they've left. For Ian Moore that doesn't seem to be the case. That could be down to some of the comments he made about our club when he claimed to be playing for a big club at Leeds, or maybe it is the realisation that he was a big signing who never quite achieved what was expected of him.
On 26th January 2011, Ian again re-united with his dad when he signed an 18 month deal with Rotherham United. The family affair didn't last long as dad Ronnie was sacked soon after following a 5-0 hammering at Chesterfield after which he said he'd shoot the players if he had a gun. Ian's stay at Rotherham wasn't to last much longer and in June 2011 he was released from his contract by mutual consent to enable him to look for another club.
Without a club at the start of the 2011/12 season, Moore revealed in mid-August that he would be training with Accrington Stanley.
Links
Thomas-Moore wants out of Tranmere (09/08/10)
Our Ian is back with his dad (26/01/11)