Manchester-babe Danny Higginbotham could manage only a handful of games for United, but went on to top 300 games in the Football League. Most of them were in the Premiership, starting at Derby. When the Rams were relegated in 2002, Danny remained for half-a-season before returning to the Premier League with Southampton, on loan. Used mainly as a substitute in the 2003 run-in, he essentially took over from Franny Benali, as Wayne Bridge’s deputy at left-back. Having played once in the FA Cup run, he was on the bench for the Final, ahead of Benali.

Danny’s generous offer, to Franny, of his losers’ medal is recorded, tears and all, in Benali’s profile.

Benali thereupon retired and Bridge left for Chelsea, whence Graeme Le Sauxarrived to compete, when fit, for the left-back spot – until Danny, tall and athletic enough for the role, stepped into the centre-back vacancy created by Michael Svensson’s mysterious injury in the March warm-up at Fratton Park.

Which meant that Danny was able to prove his worth in two positions over the next two seasons, the second of which was in the Championship.

With Gareth Bale bursting on to the scene at the end of that 2005-06 campaign, Danny opted to join Stoke.Hardly missing a game in their 2006-07 Championship season, he was made captain and voted Stoke’s Player-of-the-Year. But with Stoke failing to gain promotion, Danny joined Premiership Sunderland. Stoke meanwhile came up to the Premiership without him and back he trotted – to become, as manager Pulis has explained, not regular, yet “crucial”, to Stoke’s cause. In January 2012, however, Danny returned to the Championship, as a loanee, to Forest and Ipswich, in turn. And then, in January 2013, just after his 34th birthday, he had his first experience of third-tier football, when he signed for Sheffield United, confident that this was “a club on the up.” Danny was on the way down though and after just one game for Altrincham he retired with these words “after the game there was nothing there, I just wanted to get home, it was becoming more monotonous and a chore rather than a hobby”. But he did not turn his back on the game and has since emerged as one of Sky TV’s main commentators and in 2015 released his autobiography “Rise of the Underdog”.

In November 2013, qualifying through his maternal grandmother, he was capped for Gibraltar in their first official international and was man-of-the match in the 0-0 draw with Slovakia.