page_title: Matt Jarvis
section_title: Gillingham
hierarchical_section_title: Matt Jarvis / Club career / Gillingham
caption_attribution_description: English: gillman1986
context_page_description: Matthew Thomas Jarvis is an English professional footballer who plays as a winger for National League club Woking.
  After an unsuccessful spell as a youth-team player for Millwall, Jarvis began his professional career with Gillingham, making his Football League debut for the Kent-based club at the age of 17. He made more than 100 appearances for Gillingham and became a target for a number of larger clubs, eventually signing for Wolverhampton Wanderers in June 2007. He became a first-team regular for the club, helping them win promotion to the top flight in 2009. In August 2012, he joined West Ham United for an undisclosed club record fee. In September 2015, he joined Norwich City on loan until the end of the season, and made that move permanent in January 2016.
  He received his first call-up to the England squad in 2011 and made his debut as a substitute against Ghana in a friendly at Wembley Stadium.
context_section_description: Like his older brother Ben, Jarvis started his career on the books of Millwall, but was released by the club. With the help of a member of the Millwall coaching staff, however, he was taken on by Kent-based club Gillingham as a trainee. On 4 November 2003, at the age of 17, he made his Football League debut in a match against Sunderland when a number of senior players were missing due to influenza. He came on as a 76th-minute substitute for Richard Rose in a match which his team lost 3–1. He next played for the first team in an FA Cup defeat to Burnley on 24 January 2004, and went on to feature regularly in the team in March and April. In total he made two starts and eight substitute appearances during the 2003–04 season, but also continued to play for the youth team, helping them reach the last sixteen of the FA Youth Cup. Shortly before the end of the season he signed his first professional contract with the club when manager Andy Hessenthaler gave him a three-year contract.
  In the 2004–05 season Jarvis became a regular in the Gillingham first team, playing in 30 Football League matches, although he was out of action for five weeks in January and February after undergoing an operation on a hernia. He also scored his first goal for the club in a win over Wolverhampton Wanderers on 30 October 2004. Gillingham, however, were relegated from the Championship at the end of the season. In the 2005–06 season he was again a regular, and scored seven goals, his best season tally to date.
  Midway through the 2006–07 season Gillingham offered Jarvis a new contract, which the club described as the most lucrative it had ever offered to a player of his age. Jarvis rejected the contract offer, but later claimed via his agent that he would be happy to remain at Priestfield Stadium if the club "demonstrated that it could match his ambitions". A number of Premier League and Championship clubs showed interest in signing Jarvis, and Plymouth Argyle made an unsuccessful bid for the player, manager Ian Holloway commenting that "we did make a bid but it got knocked back". Towards the end of the season Nottingham Forest of League One made an offer of £650,000, hoping to circumvent the transfer window by taking the player on loan until the end of the season, but the bid was turned down by the player's agent.
  Jarvis ended the season having been named in the PFA's League One Team of the Year, and with Charlton Athletic expressing their interest in him. However, Gillingham chairman Paul Scally stated that he believed the player's agent had already agreed a transfer with another club. Scally also claimed that Jarvis had the potential to play for England by the time he was 24.
caption: Jarvis playing for Gillingham in 2006
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