When the hearing took place for a work permit for the Latvian Imants Bleidelis, manager, David Jones explained to the panel Southampton had originally sought to sign him when they signed his compatriot, Marian Pahars, but “lacked the finance to do so”. They judged Bleidilis to be a player of similar quality to Pahars who had been highly successful since his move to the UK and also compared him to Andrei Kanchelskis who was a successful player with Manchester United, Everton and Rangers. Pahars himself also provided testimony, stating that his colleague was a

“very skillful International colleague with more caps than myself”.

The club rounded off their case by stating that Mr Bleidilis was a skillful right-winger who would be an immediate asset to a team currently struggling near the foot of the Premier League. Two of the panel felt that Bleidilis would not make a sufficient impact on the English game as he was, in their opinion, an addition to a squad rather than a genuinely gifted player in his own right. However, the rest of the Panel was convinced that he was a player of high quality, a regular Latvian International who at 28 was in his prime. Therefore on a majority decision, it was recommended that a work permit be issued.

Unfortunately by the time the decision was made David Jones had been placed on gardening leave and Beidelis’s signing of a three and a half year contract was overshadowed by the media frenzy that followed Glen Hoddle’s arrival. He struggled to make much of an impact on his new manager and when he did appear in the limelight it was in the debacle at Prenton Park when he replaced Pahars with Saints leading 3-0 only to succumb to a spirited Tranmere fightback which produced four goals and a humiliating substitution of the substitute. But he can’t have been as bad as all that, after all, he won over 100 caps for his country, but his last appearance for the club came just 16 months after his debut, in the match against West Ham during which Matt Le Tissier also made his final bow and he was released at the beginning of 2003 to play in Denmark and Austria on his way home.