A hard-working, yet stylish, midfielder,

Matthew Oakley ticked most of the boxes Premiership bosses insist upon. Which is why more than one Southampton manager revealed that Oakley’s name was always the first to be entered on the team sheet. Not all of the fans were equally convinced. While his supporters thrilled to his surging runs from deep that would occasionally climax in an exciting long-range goal, his detractors would complain of his playing too safe, with so many side-way passes. However you weigh the pros and cons, the fact is that Matt won four U-21 caps and made more than 300 appearances for the Saints, including the 2003 FA Cup Final.

In the two seasons after that Final, he was limited, by injuries, to a dozen Premiership starts. But in 2005-06, his first experience of second-tier football, Matt played regularly until February. And that was that. Rejecting the one-year contract offered by manager, George Burley because he thought he deserved a longer one, he signed a three-year deal with Championship Derby. He duly rubbed Burley’s nose in it by captaining the Rams to play-off glory, with a two-legged victory over Southampton being followed by the jackpot at Wembley.

His contribution to Derby’s calamitous Premiership season of 2007-08 was to be joint top-scorer, on three goals, at the turn of the year. Whereupon, he was sold to Leicester, with whom he promptly descended to League One. But he captained them straight back up in 2009, contributing their Goal-of-the-Season. He was then a regular as Leicester qualified for the 2010 Championship play-offs, but never got to participate in them. He played another full season before he was loaned, in September 2011, to League One Exeter, under Paul Tisdale, with whom he’d played in Southampton’s Reserves. The Grecians were duly relegated, but Matt contracted to play fourth-tier football in 2012-13.

In 1999, he helped set up Nebuchadnezzar Wines, a company that buys, sells, lays down and invests in fine wine. They are “exclusive wine merchants to the PFA,” according to their website, where you are offered a Guigal Cote Roiteat £368 a bottle, vintage 2009 – the very year in which Matthew Oakley was voted into the PFA’s League One Team-of-the-Year. By 2020 he had become a football agent.