Paul Wotton’s arrival at St Marys bucked the trend. With the Dutch duo of Poortvliet and Wotte at the helm, the overriding ethos of the club for 2008-09 decided returning chairman Rupert Lowe, would be to rely on the youngsters, but even the Southampton management realised at least a couple old heads around the place would be prudent.

Cue the arrival of Paul Wotton, a one-club man from Plymouth who had skippered his home town team to League One and Two titles.

Jan Poortvliet’s kids did their best but the season was calamitous, even so Paul only made 18 starts, frustrating him no end “they needed help and there was me with over 400 games under my belt sitting on my backside”.

He was indeed a belt and braces, committed midfielder,

who had been regarded as a dead ball specialist at Home Park, scoring nearly 60 goals, but with Rickie Lambert soon to join the side Paul’s skills in that department were never witnessed or indeed needed. He was a little one-paced which is why, in his second season he was kept out of the side by Dean Hammond and Morgan Schneiderlin, but when the latter was injured Paul realised his long held ambition of playing at Wembley in the JPT Final victory over Carlisle – “a day I’ll never forget” he said. After a couple of seasons with Yeovil, Paul went home to Argyle, by now back in the fourth-tier. He became assistant manager alongside Derek Adams but both were sacked in April 2019 and Paul moved into non-League management with Truro.