Iwan Wyn Roberts (born 26 June 1968) is a Welsh former professional footballer who played as a forward from 1986 to 2005 for a number of clubs and the Wales national team.

Roberts signed for Wolverhampton Wanderers after three further seasons, but stayed for a single campaign before transferring to Norwich City, where he spent seven years.

[4] He lost his second front tooth as the result of an elbow to the mouth from Darran Rowbotham when he was 18,[5] playing for Watford in a pre-season friendly.

[10] Having made only one full first team appearance for Watford prior to the match, Roberts came on as a second-half substitute to score the winning goal from a narrow angle.

[11] Watford ended the season in ninth position,[12] and despite having three years of his contract remaining, Taylor left the club to join Aston Villa.

[13] Roberts broke through in the following season, making 31 appearances in all competitions and scoring three goals, but Watford finished 19th in the table and were relegated to the Second Division.

[14][15] The 1988–89 season saw him make 32 appearances in total, scoring six goals,[16] with Watford finishing fourth, but failing to progress past the 1989 Football League play-offs.

[18] He scored nine goals in 63 league matches in total for Watford,[19] but felt that he was failing to get enough opportunities and moved to Division Three club Huddersfield Town prior to the start of the 1990–91 season, for £275,000.

[31] At half time, Leicester were two goals behind and he expected manager Brian Little, "the nicest man" he ever played for to rant in the dressing room, but instead he quietly told the players he was going to make two substitutions.

[32] After retiring, Roberts said he still regretted not completing a hat-trick in the match, a feat he did achieve in April 1994, in a 28-minute spell against local rivals Derby County.

[36] What followed was one of the only two incidents that "bugged" Roberts during his playing career: while celebrating the win, he suddenly realised he was in danger due to a pitch invasion by Stoke supporters.

[39] He spent only one season at Molineux in which he scored 12 goals in 33 games, including one hat-trick for the club in a match against their local rivals West Bromwich Albion in the Black Country derby.

[39][40] Wolves ended the season in third place but lost 4–3 on aggregate to Crystal Palace in the play-offs, with Roberts failing to score in either leg.

[41] In the summer off-season of 1997, Roberts returned from holiday and came into the club for the first day of pre-season training where manager Mark McGhee called him into his office.

[44] There were crowd chants about him being a "waste of money" and Roberts remembers that someone wrote to the Eastern Daily Press and described him as "the worst ever to wear a Norwich shirt", adding the reflection that "it was the bleakest period of all my years as a pro.

He just missed out on becoming the first player in the club's history to win the award three years in a row when Andy Marshall finished narrowly ahead of him in the voting for the 2000–01 season.

[47] Roberts had an agent, former team-mate and close friend David Speedie, who advised him to turn down Norwich's offer and sign for Nottingham Forest or Huddersfield Town.

[47] Shortly after he signed a contract extension in January of that season, Bruce Rioch left the club and was succeeded by Bryan Hamilton.

Roberts helped Hamilton make a good start when he scored both goals in a 2–0 win at Portman Road against City's East Anglian derby rivals Ipswich Town on 19 March 2000.

[51] Roberts missed much of the second half of the season because of injury, but came off the substitute's bench in the final to give Norwich the lead in the first minute of extra-time with a header.

Roberts took – and scored – the first penalty of the shoot-out but misses by Phil Mulryne and Daryl Sutch meant Birmingham won 4–2 and were promoted to the Premiership.

[60] With the championship already won, Worthington restored Roberts to the starting line-up for the last game of the season at Gresty Road against Crewe Alexandra and made him captain for the day.

[61] After being released by Norwich, he received a number of offers to play for other clubs, including from Swiss side FC Basel, but eventually signed a two-year contract with Gillingham of the Championship, where he would be player/coach.

[64] He made his debut for the Welsh national team on 11 October 1989, when he took to the field in a 2–1 defeat to the Netherlands in a World Cup qualifier at the Racecourse Ground, Wrexham.

[66] He earned two more caps that year at the Kirin Cup in Japan, suffering a 1–0 loss against Argentina and receiving a red card in a 1–0 victory over the host nation for a foul on Masami Ihara.

[66][67] Roberts made three appearances for the senior Wales team in 1994, including two qualification matches for UEFA Euro 1996 against Albania and Moldova.

[66] Roberts is phlegmatic that he made only 17 appearances ("most as substitute") for Wales, as he "had to compete against the likes of Mark Hughes, Ian Rush, Dean Saunders, so there were some world-class strikers before me and I was just happy to get in the squad.

[5] The book proved controversial, because it included an admission of a deliberate stamp on Wolves defender Kevin Muscat, an incident that had taken place in 2000: "As I got up I 'lost my balance' and trod on his back.

[73] Because of the coverage in the book, the Football Association retrospectively investigated the incident and Roberts, then playing at Gillingham, was banned for three matches and fined £2,500 for the offence.

[74] Roberts commented that this "left 'a bitter taste' – especially after England captain David Beckham escaped without a punishment for his deliberate foul in the World Cup qualifier against Wales.