Plymouth Argyle have announced the appointment of John Deehan as their Director of Football.

The Norwich City and Aston Villa forward has been appointed by the Pilgrims' board to assist manager Carl Fletcher and his management team for the remainder of the season.

John was at Home Park on Saturday for the Pilgrims' 1-1 draw with Crawley Town.

Birmingham-born John, aged 54, has experience at all levels of football administration, having served as a coach, manager, chief scout and director of football during his lifetime in football.

That followed a highly successful playing career at the highest level, which began in 1975 and included League Cup wins with both Villa and Norwich, where he is a hugely respected Hall of Famer.

An England Under-21 international, he also played for West Brom - as a £500,000 Ron Atkinson capture - and Ipswich and Barnsley, scoring 120 goals in 379 career appearances.

He first moved into management in 1988, when he became player-coach at Manchester City under former Norwich team-mate Mel Machin.

He returned to Carrow Road in 1992 as assistant manager to Mike Walker and the pair guided City to through the club's most successful ever period.

After finishing third in the 1992-93 Carling Premiership, Norwich qualified for the UEFA Cup and knocked out Vitesse Arnhem and Bayern Munich - becoming the only foreign side to lower Bayern's colours in the Olympic Stadium - before being pipped by Inter Millan.

Walker left for Everton and John accepted the manager's job in his stead, but the club was on the wane and he resigned in April 1994 in the hope that former Pilgrim Gary Megson could inspire the team to avoid relegation to the First Division.

John bounced back to take over as manager to Third Division Wigan Athletic shortly afterwards, and guided them to the title in his second season.

After comfortably keeping the Latics up in 1997-98, he became assistant manager at Sheffield United under Steve Bruce, who he later worked with at Huddersfield Town.

He was subsequently assistant manager to another ex-Pilgrim John Gregory at Aston Villa, for who he had a caretaker spell in charge following Gregory's resignation.

In 2003, John was named as Director of Football at Northampton Town, with Colin Calderwood working under him as team manager and they succeeded in achieving promotion for the Cobblers, in 2005-06.

Then John moved to Lincoln City, also as director of football, to mentor John Schofield and, together, they led City to the League Two play-offs in their first season.

John's role at Lincoln ended when Schofield was dismissed the following season. Since then, he has served as chief scout back at Norwich, for eight months, and Head of Recruitment at Grimsby, for two months.