Kevin Phillips was one that got away – only to return, a prodigal son, 12 years later.

Saints fans who watched him on that second coming, dropping deep to collect a pass with an assured first touch, may find it hard to countenance that he was told, as a teenage charge of Southampton youth coach, Dave Merrington, that he was better “coming on to the play” and should accordingly forget being a striker and convert to right-back. Kevin turned out twice for the Reserves in that position in 1990-91, the make-or-break season in which his YTS traineeship ended and the manager had to decide whether to sign him or release him.

Chris Nicholl had enough right-backs in Jason Dodd and Jeff Kenna and let Kevin go. As his father drove him home up the M3 in his Vauxhall Viva Kevin confessed he shed a tear and feeling “heartbroken”.

He went home to Hertfordshire, where his mum helped him find two positions: working with her at the Sunblest bread factory; and playing part-time for Baldock Town of the Beazer Homes League. Baldock restored him to the attack and nearby Watford duly brought him into the Football League.

His next club was Sunderland, newly relegated from the Premiership. In his first season with them, they reached the play-off Final. Kevin had the double satisfaction of catching up with his sister, Karen, who had beaten him to Wembley, with Hemel Hempstead Ladies, while his goal in that game – lost to Charlton on penalties – brought his season’s total to 35, surpassing Brian Clough’s record for the club. When Sunderland won automatic promotion the next season, his high-scoring contribution earned him the first of eight England caps.

He continued to score freely in the Premiership, but Sunderland were willing to release him, aged 30, in 2003.

Gordon Strachan offered him the chance to prove that Merrington and Nicholl had got it wrong. Kevin delivered handsomely, both as an archetypical “fox-in-the-box” and with his composed link-up play. Strachan’s resignation triggered a sequence of events that culminated in relegation in 2005. By departing that summer, with a year of his contract remaining, Kevin may have appeared to be deserting a sinking ship, but the chairman assured that the fans that there were domestic reasons for his leaving St Mary’s. Kevin would now spend six seasons with three west-midlands clubs, enjoying promotion from the Championship with West Brom and Birmingham City, in turn. By the time his contract at St Andrews expired, Kevin was coming 38 and it had become almost a cliché of TV highlights programmes that he would be seen, coming off the bench, late on, to ghost into the right place to snatch a decisive goal, be it a tap-in or a screamer, in the dying minutes. The label “impact sub” could have been invented for him.

And he still had left a season in the Championship with Blackpool, whose departing manager, Ian Holloway, he then followed, in January 2013, to Crystal Palace, on loan. Now 39, he became the oldest scorer in the club’s history when he hit an eight-minute hat-trick in a March win over Hull, as Palace advanced to the play-offs. You could not have scripted the climax to that season. Coming off the bench in the play-off Final, with 25 minutes to go, Kevin had to last longer than scheduled, in order to score the winner, by converting a penalty in the 105th minute.

He was two months short of his 40th birthday, prompting his jubilant manager, Ian Holloway, to vow that he would “keep signing him until he’s 50 or 60 if he keeps putting the ball in the net.” Come July 2013 Holloway duly handed Kevin a one-year contract but then Holloway left and his replacement Tony Pullis let him join Nigel Pearson’s Leicester. He helped them win the Championship that season before announcing his retirement and promptly joined the coaching staff. He ended up at coaching at Stoke, via Derby County but when Gary Rowett got sacked in January 2019 he went too and has been out of work ever since although he applied, unsuccessfully, for the vacant Sunderland manager position in the autumn of that year.