so listen to this some players have that aura just looking at them is enough you know your team is about to get humiliated but the ones you should truly fear are those who look completely armless but tur to Absolute Predators the moment the ball touches their feet those are the most dangerous players on the pitch and no one mastered that art like Matt latier the guy looked honestly nerdy I just seen him walking down the street it would never even occur to you that he was an absolute superstar in the worst is that nothing changed
once he stepped on a pitch his physique was miles behind the other players his work rate was just abysmal half the time he was just walking around maybe because his Fitness was also ridiculous it wasn't just a little on a slow side at times it genuinely looked like he was playing slow motion but it was mesmerizing he'd almost get the sense that he slowed things down forest so he had more time to appreciate what he did he was the Pinnacle of a football artist an average goal wasn't enough for him he would make sure to
destroy your team in the most humiliating and elegant way possible anything you've seen the likes of canona or bov do Leta did it first you'll find almost all of those guys renting about how they built up their first touch by compulsively practicing against the wall but latier spent all of his shower doing the same with a tennis ball by the time he hit the Premier League doing it with a regular football felt like playing in Easy Mode you'll never see someone hit a volley quite like him it was uncanny how accurate his shots were in
fact he might be the Undisputed greatest penalty taker of all time taking 48 across his entire career and only ever missing once even CR7 misses them at a rate eight times higher than that bring all of this together and you're talking about a midfielder yes an actual midfielder what his speak registered 45 goals and 22 assists in 64 Premier League matches all while looking like he was holding back I mean the one time he truly found his team hopelessly Bound for relegation and finally went Full Tilt the guys saved them by putting down 14 goal
contributions in the final five matches of the Season even Lionel Messi himself only managed to reach a peak like that once in his entire career every time I hear this guy casually admitting that he was not in football for the titles or the money that he was just there to entertain the crowd I just can't stop myself from wondering how unbelievable a TCA could have been had he just trained harder gone on a proper diet or just put a more efforts on a pitch but man that was never going to happen even getting this guy
to play was a hassle you had guys like Roy Keane getting paid 90,000 a week playing in front of 70,000 people and yet no matter how many times clubs like Liverpool Tottenham and Chelsea came for ler he just refused to move somehow he was perfectly happy playing for good old Southampton earning £4,000 a week and playing in front of 15,000 people at the smallest stadium in the league I'm telling you at the time Southampton had no business being anywhere near the Premier League they were only there because latia saved them from relegation by a single
point or less four different times they loved him so much in that City that when Euros sport ran a tournament where fans could vote for the Premier League's greatest ever the entire population got together to hijack the polls and make sure he took the award it was to the point where even though Southampton was a religious club that was literally founded by a church they were all okay with breaking the first Commandments just so they could nickname him look God but really the funny thing is that we should all be glad we even got to
watch him play at all cuz when Southampton found him as a teenager he was incredibly close to turning them down you see he was already the second of the brothers to go on trial at the club another had been at middles BR his father had been at Arsenal and they all rejected every proposal they got because you got to realize they're not from England they were all born in gery this Pieceful little island in the middle of nowhere where according to T all there was to do was play football and taking Sunshine so once he
actually joined southampton's Academy and found himself being coached by Dave marrington a complete Maniac who act like a drill sergeant punishing the players by making them run laps around the training grounds if they even forgot their dirty laundry on the locker room floor latier was already going nuts but thank God the moment he started considering the option of just going back to gurny it was already too late with 59 goals in that first year alone he was promoted to the first team at the age of only 17 a couple months later he was already making
history scoring the goal that got Ron Atkinson sacked and brought Sir Alex Ferguson to Manchester by the second half of the Season he had a hatrick to his name and before he even turned 20 years old he was already being named the club's player of the Season fighting the top Strikers in the country for the Golden Boot somehow managing to turn Southampton into the second best attacking formation in the league carrying them up to Seventh Place on a table even though they had conceded more goals than two of the teams that got relegated that year
in an instant the one kid from gery was joining the England under 21s taking the League's young Player of the Year award and getting within inches of signing for Tottenham but just as the future was looking brighter than ever with a chance to line up beside Paul gason and Gary liner every week Lati backed out of that deal at the last minute because his fiance didn't fancy leaving in London and after another good season with 21 goals things started turning sour as Ian brenford took over the team and it quickly became clear that Ian leier
just did not see at a eye even though branford's overly defensive pragmatic and honestly boring tactics had taken the team from being one of the most exciting attacking sides in the country to having just 39 goals in 42 league matches it insists on using latier as Escape goats constantly calling him lazy despite the fact that he had been responsible for the greatest thing to come out of branford's time at a club scoring in every single round of the old version of The League Cup even putting three goals past Chelsea to send them to the final
and then scoring there as well to lead the game into extra time as he got within inches of bringing them their second ever major trophy by the end of the season even if latier himself had admitted that Branford wanted to play the game in a way that was totally alien to everything he believed in it still go as far as rejecting an offer from Liverpool in order to stay at the club but nothing ever seemed to satisfy Branford the next year the team began performing even worse surviving relegation by a single point despite latier again
being up there back ing for both the Golden Boot and the top of the assist providing shards by that point even with the manager holding him back latier had already reached such a cult hero like status that after goalkeeper Mark Crosley became the only man to ever save one of his penalties he'd claimed that was the greatest moment of his career latier was impressing so much that even jardier the manager of the French national team would absurdly set up a whole investigation hoping that since he had such a French sounding name they'd be able to
find some way to Grant him cious ship even though they'd quickly find out he yet no relationship to their country whatsoever and thankfully soon Bren foots would be gone going into the next season such was the lack of belief in that team most pundits were betting on them to get relegated in indeed eight matches in they already had seven defeats to their name but the hilarious thing is that branford's reaction to that was not to change their tactics it was to blame leier and drop him from the team only to go a month and a
half with without winning a single match and end up begging the guy to come back immediately getting humbled as he demolished Newcastle at the time one of the best teams in the country opening the score by grabbing onto the ball with his back heal and flicking it over one Defender and then another before finally sliding it in eventually watching his team consider an equalizer and coming back 3 minutes from the end controlling the ball on his thigh and smacking in the winner from outside the box later even admitting that he only went for the volley
because he felt too tired to Chase after the ball four matches later he had already LED them to three wins scoring or assisting every single one of the seven goals he had gotten since his comeback and humiliating brenford so much that just a month later he'd be getting the sack and that's where things got interesting the moment new manager Ellen ball arrived he went into the locker room and said to his team I'm going to put laia in the middle of the pitch and whenever you have the chance to get to ball to his feet
you have to do it and as for the man himself he simply told them you're our one chance to get out of trouble don't even bother defending because we all know you're rubbish at that focus on what you're good at it was as simple as that Allan ball didn't even bother too much with training sessions in the words of laa he just wanted the St for an hour a day as long as we did what he asked I'd be at the golf course by halfast 12 and apparently that was more than enough as Alan Ball
would quickly see his team go on a run of seven matches with only one defeat since just as he had predicted the moment he put ler at the center of their game he became Unstoppable the way it carried the team on his back seemed almost effortless suddenly Southampton was demolishing Liverpool 4 to2 with Lati getting a hat-trick and against Wimbledon it even go as far as asking his teammate to help him flck the ball up during a free kick so he could volley it instead of just hitting it like a normal player it was just
absurd how dominant he could be and again out of the 10 goals his team scored in those seven matches letti scored seven and assisted two out of the remaining three even as they slowly dropped back into the relegation Zone after defeats to Arsenal Chelsea and City Ellen ball would not doubt him for a second so much so that on one occasion after catching his players sneaking back into the hotel after a night out partying heated the entire Squad only to allegedly bring leer to the side and tell him that the way you're playing you can
do whatever you want and that thrust paid off massively with five matches left in the season and Southampton still below the relegation Zone latier knew this was the real deal that the whole club had it back against the wall and so when he found his team trailing 3 to one 55 minutes into the first of those games he showed up out of nowhere to score his first then put in a second to tie the match and even once norwi scored their fourth goal convincing everyone else that surely now they G it to be that he
kept pushing scoring an uncharacteristic hather to tie it all back and then finally putting in the perfect Corner in the last minute of the match to assist the winner making this the only Premier League match in history where a team managed to go behind three different times and still end up with a win regardless the job wasn't done Southampton still weren't safe so the next match latier scored one and put into truly remarkable assist to beat Blackburn 3 to one and then since three- goal contributions in a game just didn't do it for him he
went even harder against Aston Villa getting two assists from two corners stepping in his first goal and then dribbling the keeper for his second only to lose out to United a week later and end up going to the final match having to secure at least a draw in order not to get relegated once there his team would go behind just 11 minutes in so he scored a free kick to tie the match then they conceded another so he put in another great assist and even converted a penalty to put him in front and somehow one
of his teammates would still manag to score an own goal leaving Southampton just one point above the relegation Zone as the Premier League came to an end no matter what this was just absurd latier had put down 14 goal contributions in five matches to save his team even Massie only managed to match that record once in his entire career he had hit quite literally the peak of footballing performance I mean the guy had been directly involved in 92% of his team's goals in the five months since Ellen ball took over they had literally only scored
twice without his help and one of those was actually a known goal so does it even count I have no idea but what I do know is that a midfielder playing for a relegation side that just outscored konai and Ian wri so after years completely ignoring him claiming he was a luxury player didn't fit the system wasn't hard work working enough and had never played football at the highest level Terry vanol finally called the T up to the national team making him the only Southampton player in the space of a decade to reach such Heights
only to end up barely playing him no matter what with some arguing he was still upset that he had gone back on his word to sign him back when he was still at Tottenham nevertheless at Southampton alen ball had no doubts when he came to his star player he just doubled down on everything he said before and wrecked in the profits halfway through the season even leier would admit to the press that he felt like a gambler on a hot streak that every time he struck the ball it felt like it was going in against
Blackburn after he made it past two players only to smack it in from 40 yards out even the commentator would be yelling that only he can score goals like that matter of fact that one would be named the goal of the Season by the end letia would have 44 goal contributions over 49 matches won every 99 minutes enough to make him the Premier League stop assist provider enough to get him a spar in the team of the year and above all enough to get Southampton all the way up to 10th place on the table once
again despite the fact he had the worst offensive record in two of the teams who got relegated such was their dependence on latier that they were frequently referred to by the journalists as a oneman team so much so that even leer himself came out asking them to stop saying it but unfortunately for him they weren't going to become any last dependent on him anytime soon the very next season leer would end up rejecting a 10 million pound offer from Chelsea effectively rejecting the chance to become the most expensive player in the history of the league
only for Ellen ball to leave to cidi living in behind to pick up the pieces again coming into the final matches of the Season hanging by a Trad and having to carry his seemed to one win after the other until he was finally able to keep them up on gold difference at this point it was already more than clear that aside from laier Southampton were a sorry excuse of a club which should not even be in the Premier League but if anyone still had doubts the next year their manager Graham sunas started the season by
subing Lati off in order to bring in a scammer who had convinced him to give him a contract after telling him on the phone that he was cousins with George wayya regardless even while dealing with an injury Le would get back to some of his best form impressively scoring a nearly identical copy of that iconic canona goal against konas man united two months before Kona scored his own impressing enough to get called up to the World Cup qualifier fires only to end up missing some of those matches due to the previously mentioned injury even though
he' insist on playing for Southampton regardless afraid they'd get relegated without him which to be fair was a good point since as always they'd finish the season only one point above the relegation Zone but no matter what it only upset manager Glenn hudle even more as he already disliked leier since he was the one managing Chelsea when he rejected a record 10 million pound bid so much so that when he set up a B team match against Russia to the side on the last few players he'd like to call up letti score the hattick as
the fans in the stands wave signs with a message please hard Peak Le God and yet he left him out no matter what putting an end to the one dream Leti had throughout his entire life and in one way or another killing his career as despite being only 29 at the time after that it slowed down massively only starting 31 Premier League matches over the next four years somehow still managing to become the first ever midfielder to score 100 Premier League goals and closing it all up by coming into the last ever match at the
tiny yet iconic stadium that was the dell and scoring a magnificent volley to bring them to a win over Arsenal at the very last minute because after all that's what he loved the most
