$re = '/\d+ - (\w+(?: \w+)+) \(\d{4}-\d{4}\)/m';
$str = '50 - David Herd (1961-1968)
49 - Teddy Sheringham (1997-2001)
48 - George Wall (1906-1915)
47 - Stan Pearson (1935-1954)
46 - Harry Gregg (1957-1966)
45 - Paddy Crerand (1963-1971)
44 - Jaap Stam (1998-2001)
43 - Paul Ince (1989-1995)
42 - Dwight Yorke (1998-2002)';
$subst = "$1";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php