Graham Souness obviously rated Ulrich Van Gobbel: he signed him twice in 1996, the first time for Galatasaray – who promptly won the Turkish Cup Final – and then for Southampton, at a record £1.3m. “The manager and I work well together,” Uli explained: “he knows my strengths and weaknesses.”

His physical power was certainly one of his strengths but, by his own admission, one of his weaknesses, in that he sometimes relied too much on it.

Finesse and subtlety were not much in evidence, but he had been good enough to play eight times for Holland, including a game in the 1994 World Cup finals. Born, like his Southampton team-mate, Ken Monkou, in Suriname, Uli had moved to Holland as an infant, before the country of his birth became independent of Holland in 1975. Having hardly missed a Saints game for Souness, Uli played the first two games of the 1997-98 season for David Jones, but then promptly returned to Holland, for five seasons with his former club,

Feyenoord. In his retirement, he was running a shop in Rotterdam, specialising in Surinamese cultural objects, when he was sentenced in 2006 to four months imprisonment for selling cars he had rented on hire-purchase. That sentence was reduced, on appeal in 2008, to 120 hours of community service and he became a coach, in 2009, at ’66 VV Alexandria, an amateur club in Rotterdam.In 2020 he spent his fourth year in charge of Feyenoord’s U19s.