Having failed to make the first team at his home-town Montpellier, 19 year-old defender Grégory Vignal set off on a European tour of mixed fortunes. On the one hand, he would get to play in the top divisions in England, France, Scotland and Spain. On the other hand, he would have more than loan-deals than permanent contracts and the most League games he would play for any of his clubs was 30, on loan to Rangers as they won the SPL in 2005 – and the League Cup, to boot.Southampton were one of his loan-clubs.

Having impressed George Burley on a pre-season tour of Norway in the summer of 2007, Grégory was borrowed from Lens on a one-year deal.

Surviving Burley’s departure and the interim managerial duo of Jason Dodd and Gorman, he had a strong run for Nigel Pearson, for whom he scored three penalties in the space of four matches. In all, he featured in half of the Saints’ Championship fixtures, that season, invariably at left-back. It was, by the standards of a chaotic campaign – in which 37 players were used in the League alone and in which relegation was avoided on the last day – a reasonably successful loan period. When it ended in the summer of 2008, the question of whether Pearson might wish to extend it was academic: in came a new Board and Grégory returned to Lens.

Amid more trials, he had a few games with Birmingham and in Greece. A short-term contract at Dundee United was cancelled in November 2012, without his getting a game and Gregory had no club until the summer of 2013, when he joined AS Beziers, of France’s fourth tier. He later returned to Rangers working for their academy when in the summer of 2019 in a big shake up he was appointed head of the women’s football team.