Barry Venison (born 16 August 1964) is an English football coach, former professional footballer and sports television pundit. As a player was a defender from 1981 to 1997. He played for Sunderland, Liverpool, Newcastle United, Galatasaray and Southampton. He was capped twice by England. Following retirement, he became a television pundit and most notably worked on ITV Sport's The Premiership between 2001 and 2004 whilst the network held the rights to show Premier League highlights. In 2016, he was given his first head coaching role at Orange County Blues, succeeding Oliver Wyss. Club career Sunderland Venison was born in Consett, County Durham. He played for England at youth and under-21 level in his early days. He started his club career in his native North East with Sunderland and set a record when he became the youngest captain at a Wembley cup final when, aged 20 years and 220 days, he skippered Sunderland against Norwich City in the 1985 League Cup final in place of the suspended Shaun Elliott. Unfortunately for both Venison and Sunderland they lost 1–0. Venison had originally made his debut for the Black Cats, aged just 17, on 10 October 1981 in the 2–0 league defeat to Notts County at Meadow Lane. He went on to play in 20 league games that season scoring one goal in the process. The steady and reliable right full-back settled into first team football well at Roker Park and became a firm favourite in 1983–84, when he missed just one league game. At the end of the 1984–85 season, the same season in which they had reached the League Cup final, Sunderland were relegated to the Second Division. After Sunderland's failure to win promotion in 1985–86, Venison asked for a transfer as his Sunderland contract neared expiry in 1986, so he wrote Liverpool as that was the only team he wanted to play for. By the end of the 1985–86 season he had made a total of 205 appearances for the Wearsiders; 173 of them in the Football League. He had managed two goals. Liverpool It was Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish who acted quickest and duly offered him a deal. The recent Double winners paid Sunderland £200,000 for Venison's services on 31 July 1986, with a view to him becoming a long term successor to the ageing right-back Mark Lawrenson. Venison made his Liverpool debut on 16 August 1986 in the