As if surviving school with ginger hair was not bad enough, it could have been even worse for Perry Groves. He might have been named Pernell, after one of his parents’ favourite actors, Pernell Roberts, who played Adam in the TV series, Bonanza.

But they settled for the name’s diminutive: “Perry”. Although his preferred position was outside-right, he could make his presence felt on either flank in a manner that appealed to George Graham. Thwarted as manager of Millwall when he tried to buy Perry from Colchester for £15,000, Graham eventually took him to Highbury for £75,000. Perry was much used by Graham as what we would now call an “impact sub”, coming off the bench with instructions to “just keep moving around” – most effectively so at Anfield on 26 May 1989 when, joining the action very late, he made a “fantastic” decoy run, he self-mockingly claims, to create “a gaping hole” through which Michael Thomas cantered to score a dramatic championship-winning goal.

If that was the highlight of his career, Perry featured in some memorable games at The Dell for Arsenal – more, it might well be said, than after he’d joined the Saints. Thus, in his first season as a Gunner, he broke Tim Flowers’s cheekbone in a collision. And in the next, he recalls Graham’s confusion when he discovered that an unknown called Alan Shearer was making his home debut for the Saints.

He signed for Southampton as a 27 year-old nursing an Achilles problem to which Ian Branfoot, with Shearer-money to burn, was indifferent,

Perry reckons – so much so that he was offered a longer contract than he wanted, on a better wage than at Arsenal. All for a dozen starts and a few introductions from the bench, before his Achilles tendon ended his League career. Although not bitter at his premature descent into non-league football – “my Achilles could have snapped when I was 16, not when I was 28” – he enjoyed the atmosphere the fans created at The Dell and would have liked to get better acquainted with them. That said, it would have been a big ask to acquire anything like the cult status he had achieved at Highbury – as manifested in the Gooners’ renderings of We All Live in a Perry Groves World, to the tune of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Perry capitalised on that tribute in the title of his 2006 autobiography, which became, as the Sun has it, “a hilarious surprise bestseller.” There are websites, too, dedicated to the cult-hero, who has worked in both radio and TV. “Humbled” by such attention to a journeyman who played among stars, he seems to have kept his feet on the ground in some mundane jobs. In March 2014, along with his friend Josh Landy, Groves launched a company called “Play With a Legend” which offers football fans the chance to play alongside their heroes such as Matt Le Tissier, Paul Merson and Dion Dublin on stag, corporate and charity events. The concept has been well received and has achieved national publicity.