A solid centre forward, with a good record in youth football, John Sutton was not able to force aside the bigger names in front of him in the Tottenham forward line and moved around to find first team football.
Joining Spurs as a 14 year old and travelling down from Norwich, where he had started his football training, John looked to follow his brother Chris (of Norwich City and Blackburn Rovers fame) into the professional ranks. But he had to make a difficult decision before he got that far, having represented Norfolk and the Midlands at cricket, but opted for football.
Not the quickest over the ground, Sutton made up for that with a quickness of thought in getting into position in the box to hit the target. Played alongside Peter Crouch in the youth side and looked a good bet to move up the ranks, as he made the reserves after scoring 25 goals in 26 youth matches, having moved to London to save the time travelling down from Norfolk.
Spent a couple of spells on loan at Carlisle United and Swindon Town (25 minutes played and ten days at the club) to get first team experience, but failed to make the breakthrough into the first team squad apart from pre-season friendlies, so left to join Raith Rovers, but within a short time had moved back South to MiIlwall, but he played only four games for them in the league before having a loan spell at Dundee and then moving to St. Mirren on a permanent basis when he was released by the Lions.
Sutton won promotion with the Buddies to the Scottish Premier Division in his first season at the club, but spent only one more season there before moving back to England with Wycombe Wanderers. Finding it harder in the English leagues to score than in Scotland, he was at Adams Park for one season before John's contract with Wycombe was cancelled by mutual consent on19th August 2008, and he signed for Motherwell, where he spent three years, making a name for himself as a regular goal-scorer, as Motherwell pushed up the table and reached the 2011 Scottish Cup final. Such was his worth that he was snapped up be Hearts in May 2011, but financial problems at the Edinburgh club meant that his stay was onyl for two season, when he then returned to Motherwell, with no prospect of being paid at Tynecastle.