Former Wanderer Cameron Jerome has confirmed that he is “officially retired” from professional football and opened up about his new chapter in the game.

Jerome was released by the Whites in the summer following an 18-month spell at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.

The forward brought a wealth of experience following spells with Birmingham, Norwich and Stoke among others.

He had a prolific end to last season - with goals against Shrewsbury, Port Vale and Peterborough – and came off the bench in the play-off final at Wembley.

Jerome revealed that he has now started a consultancy business and is working with both individual strikers and clubs.

The 38-year-old confirmed that he had offers to extend his playing career but felt it was the right time to take on a new challenge.

When asked by The Sportsman what he is up to now, Jerome replied: “Well, officially retired. Obviously, that came around in the summer.

“At the moment, I have been working on a consultancy business which I have set up, mentoring strikers and helping to develop their understanding of what they are good at and not good at.

“It is going good, I am really enthusiastic about it at the moment. It has been quite a challenging four or five months but I am learning every day.”

Jerome says his role behind the scenes during the latter stages of his career aided the transition to his new venture.

Jerome spent 18 months at Bolton (Image: CameraSport - Alex Dodd) “I sort of morphed into – during the last three years of my career, 18 months at Luton and 18 months at Bolton – being that senior pro around the dressing room and helping the younger strikers,” he added.

“I kind of morphed into the role anyway and when I was thinking about what I wanted to do… was I was going to finish or carry on playing? I had offers to play but then I thought I was delaying what I wanted to get into.”

The former Bolton man explained what his new role entails and the impact he hopes to have on players and clubs who work with him.

“I am so passionate about this and have learnt a lot to do with data, recruiting and things like that,” he stated.

“I thought, ‘How can I marry the things I am most keen on and interested in to do something that is going to help people?’ - I can either help individuals privately, which I am doing, or help clubs recruit strikers.

“They are the biggest assets around in football, as everybody knows, they command the most transfer fees.

“It is in everyone’s best interests for strikers to be firing. I did a lot of studying – learning the data, what that tells you and how to understand it.

“And just mentoring, I look back at my career at certain moments and teams where you might be struggling for form. The team might not be performing or yourself as an individual, the goals might not be coming.

“How do you then speak to somebody who will give you impartial, positive or negative feedback? It is honesty and openness.”

Jerome also recalled how his Wanderers move came about in January 2023 after a difficult period off the pitch.

The veteran had been enjoying life at Kenilworth Road but decided it would be best for his family to move back up North.

“Circumstances changed,” he said. “We had an incident, a burglary, at home when I was away. My family was up here and I was commuting.

“I just had to stop playing football for a couple of months, I was going to retire at that point. I thought, ‘I can’t commute down there, it is not going to work’.

“I spoke to the club and Rob Edwards persuaded me to come in one day a week and sort of be around the club, the players, because he was building something and there was momentum.

“I set off at 5.30 and drove to Luton, trained and drove back to Manchester. That was quite taxing and I told Rob that I couldn’t do it. He didn’t want me to go but understood my decision, so I went to Bolton.”