Aston Villa promotion hero retires from football with his head held high

Former Aston Villa goalkeeper Jed Steer has announced his retirement from football at the age of 33 with three historic Wembley wins to his name.

Villa were promoted from the Championship back to the Premier League in 2018/19 and Steer’s unanticipated return to the fold under manager Dean Smith was one of the defining influences on the ten-match winning run and successful play-offs campaign that got them there.

Steer spent a decade as a Villa player after signing from Norwich City to reunite with Paul Lambert in the summer of 2013. Though he was loaned out on five different occasions and endured some significant injury issues, the former England Under-19 international calls time on his playing career as a hugely popular figure at the club.

Steer left Villa in 2023 and played for a year and half for Peterborough United, winning two more Wembley finals. He said goodbye to Posh by mutual consent in the summer of 2025 and has now announced that his playing days are over.

“It’s time to hang up the gloves,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

“It’s been a blast. Three Wembley final wins, promotion to the Premier League and Achilles ruptured!

“Thank you to the fans and everyone who’s been part of the journey! I have memories that will live with me forever.”

A personal tribute

As Steer becomes more of a fixture on Villa’s official club media channels, more and more supporters will come to realise that he’s an unimpeachable representative for our football club.

He didn’t always have the easiest time. Few players breeze through their careers without finding themselves injured or out of favour, and goalkeepers are of course especially vulnerable to competition for places.

But Steer speaks with such love for Villa that it’s easy to forget that he played for nine other clubs in his career. His legacy at ours is undeniable.

When Villa needed him, he was there. And Villa needed him. Smith’s team in 2018/19 had a tremendous amount of outfield quality but were short in goal by the middle of the season.

What Steer brought back from Charlton Athletic at the end of 2018 was a standard of goalkeeping that matched the excellent Championship team in front of him.

I’ve been lucky enough to speak to Steer on a number of occasions this year both in an interview context – most recently for this very website – and in person.

He’s going to be a huge success whether he further pursues his media work or decides to try his hand elsewhere. Steer is a great talker with a keen football brain, tactical knowledge and a natural presence on microphone and on camera.

More than that, he’s just a genuinely lovely man. Villa supporters should be very proud to call him one of our own.

Good luck, Jed. Congratulations on a fabulous career. And, from the bottom of our claret and blue hearts, thank you. You’re in now and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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