Having joined top-flight Derby County, just up the main-line from his native Burton, Paul Williams took a while to find his niche at centre-back.In the run-in to the 1990-91 season, Derby had gone 20 games without a win when Southampton visited the Baseball Ground. Midfielder Williams bagged a first-half hat-trick in the Rams’ 6-2 win. That didn’t avert relegation and Paul was Derby’s leading scorer as they lost out in the Division II play-offs, the following season, despite his conversion to centre-back during the run-in.

But it would be the second half of the 1993-94 season before Paul became a fixture at centre-back, groomed by Derby’s manager, the former Derby and England centre-half, Roy McFarland. Having made that position his own in 1994-95, under McFarland’s successor, Jim Smith, he moved to Premiership Coventry in the summer of 1995. Over the next five seasons, the Sky Blues and the Saints repeatedly finished neck-and-neck, too often just above the drop-zone. But then, in 2001, Coventry were relegated under Gordon Strachan. Five games into the next season, Strachan departed. Taking over at Southampton the following month, he immediately brought Williams back into the top flight.

Paul told the programme editor, John Hughes, that the Premier League was “the only place to be,” but he couldn’t count on the Southampton fans feeling that he was the man to be there with them. Dean Richards, a big favourite, had just departed for Tottenham, so the St Mary’s faithful were entitled to be sceptical about a 30 year-old replacement on a free transfer from a relegated club. Paul’s answer was to play 24 straight games in partnership with Claus Lundekvam, as the Saints climbed out of the bottom two to mid-table.

But early in the following season – 2002-03 – Michael Svensson slotted in alongside Lundekvam for an unbroken run of League games and all bar one Cup match, all the way to the FA Cup Final. After which, Paul left for some second-tier football with Stoke, followed by a couple of stints in the USA, the second of them as coach. His subsequent coach-cum-managerial positions in England have included two partnerships with Jason Dodd, first at League Two Aldershot and then back at Southampton. As the club’s professional development coach, Paul was in charge of the U-14s, and assisted Jason with the U-18s on match-days. But then in 2014 for reasons that were never made clear he and Dodd were relieved of their duties and Paul’s kit bag has since been in demand but also much travelled.