Jimmy Case joined Saints in March 1985 from Brighton, having made his name at Liverpool where he had won numerous medals as part of the teams that won three European Cups, one UEFA Cup, four League Championships, and the League Cup. He reached the 1983 FA Cup Final with Brighton for whom he was a team- captain from 1984. Chris Cattlin then sold Jimmy to Southampton, as if the reasoning that banking a fee of £35,000 was a good deal for a 30-year-old. It was a classic purchase by Lawrie McMenemy, but he would almost instantly depart for Sunderland, leaving his successor, Chris Nicholl, to decide what to make of Jimmy. He made him his captain and played him in a position from which he could “control the game”, as Matt Le Tissier put it.

Matt was referring specifically to Jimmy’s role as the fulcrum in a system in which Rodney Wallace and he “nicked all the goals”. Describing that system in Matt’s testimonial program, Nicholl explains that “it was introduced partly because Jimmy Case was there, with his decent football brain.” And the fans self-evidently appreciated that. In 1989-90, when Matt and Rodney “nicked” 38 goals between them, Jimmy was voted Player-of-the-Year. Even the Football League took note – by selecting Jimmy, the following season, for their match v the Irish League. Nicholl also enthused about Jimmy’s “brilliant” overall influence on the youngsters in the side. Le Tissier was grateful that

“Jimmy took it upon himself to look after the young players,”

while Franny Benali, a player more than capable of looking after himself, saw Jimmy as his “minder”. That word is football parlance, of course, for the team’s hard-man, who dishes out retribution for fouls on less vigorous team-mates. Jimmy certainly had the temperament for that role – and the cards and suspensions to show for it – although he insists that he was bent on intimidating, but never harming, his opponents. When Ian Branfoot succeeded Nicholl in 1991, he immediately let 37-year-old Jimmy leave, on the advice of Lawrie McMenemy.

He had made 272 appearances for Southampton – not bad for Cattlin’s cast-off – and still had almost 100 League games left in him, for five more clubs, ending up as player-coach at Brighton, where he then managed briefly. He was, as Ian Baird claimed in his biography

“the best manager you could wish to have, he could also be the worst – he was far too nice”.

He had a couple of stints in local football-management and became a pundit for The Saint, the club’s radio station, while it lasted. He has also commuted regularly to Liverpool, to work as a commentator and pundit for BBC Radio Merseyside