Ryan Bertrand had to bide his time to make his debut for Chelsea. Having joined them from Gillingham in July 2005 – with Chelsea having to pay £125,000 in compensation – it wasn’t until April 2011 he made his debut having made five loan moves. Ashley Cole was hogging the left-back position but there was space for him in Chelsea’s Champions League final team that beat Bayern Munich on penalties in May 2012. He thus became the first player to make his Champions League debut in a final.

Despite now possessing a CL winners medal, Ryan had not finished being a loanee and, after six months at Villa Park, Southampton became his seventh temporary move as Ronald Koeman began his rebuild following the departure of the previous manager, Mauricio Pochettino, to Spurs. He settled quickly, playing his part in Saints attaining their most Premier League points while reaching their highest position. In the February the loan was made permanent with Saints parting with a fee in the region of £10m. He had already been capped a couple of times for England but his form at St Mary’s meant he did become England’s regular left-back for a period and he made another 17 appearances for the national side scoring one goal v Malta in 2017. Very much a modern-day full-back Ryan’s surges up the wing and crosses from the by-line became a pleasing feature of Saints attacking repertoire and his standing at the club was confirmed when he became captain.

In April 2021 and out of contact, Ryan decided to depart for fresh pastures and he duly signed a two-year contract with Leicester City. He is a founder of the brokerage Silicon Markets which provides machine learning and algorithmic trading tools for retail traders in the Foreign Exchange and CFD markets.