By the summer of 2012, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, standing 5ft 11ins, had the world at his feet, football-wise. So it is difficult to imagine that, as recently as 2009, he was advised that he was too short and would probably not make it.

He had joined Southampton’s Academy at the age of seven, but his parents had sent him to an independent school, where he was developing as an all-rounder – well enough to be offered a rugby trial by London Irish and a cricket trial by Hampshire. He would attend neither: he wanted to be a footballer. The problem, as he later explained to the Mirror, was that the other academicians “shot up at 14,” but he didn’t. Which is why he was told, at 15, that the club’s development-staff did not think he could hack it.

Drawing upon the expertise and guidance of his ex-footballer father, who had been working with the Saints Academy U-11s, and his physio-mother, Alex rose to the challenge to compensate for his lack of inches – sufficiently so to be making his first-team debut, six months later, becoming Southampton’s second youngest debutant – at 16 years, 199 days – behind Theo Walcott.

Comparisons with Theo were inevitable. Both had blistering pace, causing debates as to whether they should be deployed wide or down the middle, but it was soon being suggested that Alex might have a better all-round game: more tricks in his locker, with which to beat an opponent; perhaps more likely to score goals; and – now that he’d shot up and filled out – tougher, tackling-back.

With Alex playing regularly the following season, until he was sidelined by injury in March, the comparisons would often be accompanied by predictions – that he would soon follow Theo into the Premier League and quite likely to Arsenal. Alex came off the bench to score in the last game of the season – and that was his last competitive appearance for the Saints. In August, he did indeed leave for Arsenal, in a deal reported to be worth £12m up front, plus £3m in add-ons. Before the month was out, he had made his Arsenal debut, coming on at Old Trafford when United were leading 3-1.

Alex could hardly be blamed for the eventual 8-2 defeat. The following month, he scored both on his home debut in the League Cup and in the Champions League. With Arsenal playing in four competitions, Arsène Wenger was able to field Alex 27 times that season, at the end of which he won his first two England caps in warm-up games for Euro 2012, in which he then started in the opening game, becoming the second youngest player, after Wayne Rooney, to represent England in that tournament. Reporting from Donetsk, Richard Williams enthused, in the Guardian, that

“Oxlade-Chamberlain has a solidity to him, and an air of concentration, that Walcott will never be able to summon.”

Both players left Arsenal for Merseyside, the red half in the case of Alex and initially he shone in a Liverpool side very much on the up, under Jurgen Klopp, but then a serious knee injury sustained in April 2018, sidelined him for virtually the whole of the 2018-19 season. When he came off the bench in the West Ham Liverpool fixture in January 2021, it was his 100th substitute appearance in the Premier League which sitting alongside his 101 PL starts tells its own story of his career post Southampton.

Alex’s father, Mark Chamberlain, and his uncle Neville both started out at Port Vale and moved on to Stoke. While Neville would have mainly a lower-division career thereafter, Mark would flourish with Stoke in the top flight and with Portsmouth in the second tier, winning eight England caps.