A fee of £1.5m took Richard Chaplow, a former captain of the England Under-20 side, from Burnley, the second-tier club he had supported as a boy, to Premiership West Brom. He had had few enough opportunities at The Hawthorns when, a year later, Nigel Quashie was signed from recently-relegated Southampton. So he went in the opposite direction, on loan.

A busy and bold central midfielder, his premature baldness – resulting from alopecia in 2003 – made him easy to identify.

He returned to his parent club, who had now been relegated themselves, in the summer of 2006. During the 2007-08 season, he was out of the Albion side that was heading for another promotion and he returned to Lancashire – to Preston. Out of favour there as the 2010-11 season got under way, he elected to rejoin Southampton, on loan, for his first-ever experience of third-tier football. He took to this division’s “rush-and-push,” as he puts it, and the loan was extended. Then, when that expired, Nigel Adkins made his sole loan-signing his first permanent acquisition in the January 2011 window, reasoning, on the club’s website, that Richard’s attributes include the way

“he glides across the ground.”

Dancing judges might object that his “glide” was more of a scuttle but the point is that Richard surged forward fast and often – a dimension that had been lacking from the side’s midfield. He continued to add that dimension in the Saints’ Championship season of 2011-12, but his Premiership contribution in 2012-13 consisted of three appearances from the bench. Loaned out to Championship Millwall, come March, Richard joined them permanently in July 2013. In the summer of 2016 he signed on for Californian team Orange County Blues who had just appointed former Saint, Barry Venison as a coach and played two seasons with them before retiring in 2018. In his first month he was accused of using homophobic language towards an opponent and was suspended for two games although he strongly denied the offence. After hanging up his boots he and his family decided to remain in Orange County having gained their green cards while he took his coaching badges.