James Beattie had a number of obstacles to navigate upon becoming one of David Jones’s 1998 close-season signings. Firstly he was raw, still a teenager he had only made a handful of appearances for Blackburn but not scored a goal and the fee of a million pounds was substantial. But Saints were rich – at least temporarily so – as they had just pocketed £7.5m for Kevin Davies from Blackburn, but that in itself was another problem for the young striker to overcome. With the two forwards swopping places, Beattie was seen as the very popular Davies’s direct replacement and his filling his boots would not be easy.

But Beattie was not the sort of character to let such matters concern him.

As an eight-year-old he had started swimming and started to train to a competitive level to the extent that at his peak he was the second-fastest 100m freestyle swimmer in the country. But then a shoulder injury was diagnosed as the onset of arthritis, so he gave up the pool and turned to football. Privately educated (his father had twice re mortgaged the house to pay the school fees) Beattie gained nine GCSEs and considered going to university and then medical school, to become a doctor, but the attraction of becoming a footballer with his boyhood team (he had grown up “idolising” David Speedie) won the day. He had played less than 10 first-team games for Blackburn, when he was told during a round of golf that he had been sold to Southampton. David Jones, Saints manager had apparently been keeping his eye on him ever since seeing him play, aged 15, in a game against his son.

Although in his first season at The Dell he only found the back of the net on five occasions and won the first of two P-o-t-S awards. He settled well helped he recollected in an interview with The Athletic in 2019, by the warmth of the Southampton dressing room. “They were brilliant, you’ve got Tis and Franny, obviously Kenny Monkou was there and he was just the hardest man ever. But they were just great you know. Richard Dryden was there, David Hughes, Matt Oakley….. Claus Lundekvam. It was a good environment to go into”.

Beattie certainly did not lack confidence, he also had power, aggression and he could score goals with either his head or his feet. An extra bonus for his team-mates was his willingness to tirelessly track back to add a much needed extra body in the heart of the defence.

2002-03 was his best ever season by far. He scored 23 Premiership goals making him the top English marksman, he gained the first of five England caps in February 2003 against Australia and he led the forward line with gusto as Southampton reached the final of the FA Cup.

His work-rate was prodigious, his aerial prowess sometimes reminiscent of Ron Davies and his exuberance infectious, no wonder Gordon Strachan often cited his value in the dressing room.

But then as Southampton’s fortunes started to wane so James went off the boil, he never got on with Strachan’s successor, Paul Sturrock and popular rumour has it that he was a leading contributor to a dressing room revolt which heralded the Scotsman’s departure soon after 2004-05 got underway. Within months Saints were mired in a relegation battle and, with the recently installed Harry Redknapp looking to bring in some cavalry in the 2005 January window, and requiring funds (“you are my “only saleable asset” he told him), it was agreed that the disillusioned forward could join Everton for a fee of £6m.

He had his moments at Goodison, but they were blighted by disciplinary issues, niggling injuries and loss of form and those problems followed him around his future clubs, culminating in Glasgow Rangers releasing him from his contract in September 2011. He moved into management with Accrington Stanley but then hitched his wagon to that of Garry Monk, an ex-Dell colleague, as he embarked on the Championship managerial merry-go-round. However when Monk left Birmingham to be replaced by Pep Clotet, Beattie stayed put although his position appeared to be downgraded to that of scout and he was not seen in the Birmingham dugout up to March 2020 when the Corona virus forced football to be suspended. In August the same year he teamed up yet again with Monk at Sheffield Wednesday but when that didn’t last long he found himself back in Lancashire with Wigan Athletic for the beginning of the 2021-22 season.