After enjoying a successful career with Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur, and the England national team in the 1960s and 1970s, he became a manager working with several clubs.

In the game against Yugoslavia, Mullery committed a foul against Dobrivoje Trivić, and became the first England player to be sent off in a full international match.

[1] He was an integral member of England's 1970 World Cup squad, playing in all the side's games in what proved a bitterly disappointing campaign.

Two he did score (the 1970 World Cup strike against West Germany; a 1973–74 volley from outside the penalty area against Leicester City, voted the BBC's goal of the season) are well known and still talked about decades later.

[citation needed] Mullery was Brighton & Hove Albion manager between 1976 and 1981, and took the club from the third tier to the top flight of English football.

Mullery blamed what he called "the moaning, groaning bunch of players who treated me, themselves and their profession with contempt" for killing his love of football.

[9] He has worked for a number of years as a pundit for Sky Sports, and in September 2005 also briefly took a role with Conference club Crawley Town as a 'football consultant'.

[10] After leaving QPR, Mullery entered into a deep depression, worsened by an unsuccessful business venture; he converted to Christianity, though his financial and emotional troubles continued until he began working in the media in the mid-1990s.