Carlton Palmer was a telescopic-legged midfielder who, controversially for some purists, won 18 England Caps and commanded a £2.6m fee when moving between Sheffield Wednesday and Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds in 1994.

He had an “in your face” annoying attitude, was abrasive, awkward, argumentative and antagonistic but, by the same token was also aggressive, ardent, assertive and athletic –

in short an acquired taste, but he was more than able and as he was fond of pointing out all his previous managers had tried to re-sign him. Definitely, the sort of player you would rather have in your team than play against you.

He was guaranteed to add bite and venom and Dave Jones was not long in the job before he moved to bring those qualities into the Southampton midfield for £1m fee.

The trouble is that players like Carlton, with a ‘you either like me or you don’t’ attitude tend not to do a lot for dressing room harmony and, within 18 months, David Jones was happy to sanction his transfer to Nottingham Forest, with Southampton making a small profit, but proof that even at 33, Carlton could still attract a Premier League buyer, including a high-riding one like Forest.

What’s more they sold him to Premiership Coventry. His playing career then fizzled out in loans and Carlton now had a series of posts within the game over a short period. They included two shots at management, in the first of which Stockport were relegated from the second tier. Since then he has dabbled in a variety of initiatives including setting up an online estate agency in Sheffield that ceased trading in 2008, buying a pub in the same city (The Dam House), teaching PE in Dubai, appearing in a Paddy Power advert, appearing in an episode of “Come Dine with me”, fighting off bankruptcy and various punditry roles for both TV and radio, most recently BBC’s “Final Score”. In 2012 he set up his own Football Academy.

In 2014 he was appointed Director of Sport at Wellington College, in Shanghai. In 2016, still living in China, he collapsed during a sports tournament in Singapore with heart problems which led to a five hour operation to widen his arteries. He published his autobiography “It is what it is” in 2017. Four years later after living in China for 14 years he returned to manage Grantham Town in the Northern Premier League.