Do not think of Adam Lallana as the one that got left behind. True, he was part of the Southampton team that reached the 2005 FA Youth Cup final and watched as, one by one, his former team-mates departed to make names for themselves in the top flight: Theo Walcott and Gareth Bale, of course, but also Nathan Dyer, who excelled with Swansea City last season, and Leon Best, who struck four goals for Newcastle last term.
Lallana was linked with glamorous moves but none materialised, even in 2009, when Southampton sank into administration and were condemned to starting the League One season on minus 10 points. Arsenal paid £12m for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain but despite Lallana being hailed as a midfielder of rare finesse and creativity – "a magical talent, you would pay just to watch him train", according to Southampton's manager, Nigel Adkins – no one prised him away from the club that he joined as a 12-year-old. Lallana, now 24, has never considered that unjust, nor lapsed into envying his former team-mates. And there are two good reasons for that.
The first, which is easy to understand in the week in which Fabrice Muamba announced his retirement, is Lallana is grateful just to be able to play: when he was 18 he was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat and told he would have to give up the game if urgent surgery were not successful. "That was a dark time, I hadn't even played my first professional game and to be told you have to stop because of your heart was worrying," he recalls. "I had to have an operation and there was chance that if it went a certain way I wouldn't be able to play. Thankfully it went well and now I'm fit and healthy."
The other reason Lallana never felt jealous of Walcott, Bale et al is that he is a patient young man who realised he needed to take a slower route to the top. "Not one bit," he replies when asked if he felt even a pang of envy when his peers moved for millions while he grafted through League One. "Those players are different to me. You can see that physically there's a difference, with Walcott's speed and Chamberlain and Gareth being naturally powerful. And those lads just have that X factor, whereas someone like me, who may be more technical and smaller, has to work harder at things.
"When the club reached rock bottom there were things in the press that I might be leaving and people were asking why haven't I gone," he continues. "But this club is perfect for me. I was brought up in Bournemouth just half an hour away, and when we reached League One I was only 21 years old and needed regular football and that was something Southampton could give me. Alan Pardew was made manager and he is very experienced and helped me a lot in my career."
During that first campaign under Pardew, Lallana scored 20 goals from midfield, the first player since Matt Le Tissier to reach that tally in a season for Southampton. He thrived again the next season, even after Pardew was replaced by Adkins, helping Southampton to clamber out of the third tier at the second attempt. "When we reached the Championship there were questions, about the team and about me personally, as to whether we could cope and we did so quite comfortably, being in the top two all season. So I've loved it at Southampton and I wouldn't have changed a thing."
Lallana is not the only player who has been with the club since the start of their renaissance. The striker Rickie Lambert, for instance, was the first big signing by the late Swiss tycoon Markus Liebherr after he bought the club from the administrator in 2009, and several others have also been part of the climb out of the abyss. "We still have the core of the team that got back-to-back promotions, it's real solid and that spirit has been a major factor in our success," Lallana says. "To keep that and make a few shrewd additions is what we need."
Adkins has begun making those additions. He broke the club's transfer record this summer by paying nearly £7m for the Burnley striker Jay Rodriguez and is about to break it again by spending around £11m on Bologna's Uruguay winger Gastón Ramírez. Though Adkins also bought the full-back Nathaniel Clyne and is trying to add a couple more centre-backs before the transfer window shuts, the manager insists Southampton's game plan this season will be to attack opponents rather than to cling on for survival. That is music to the ears of Lallana. "That's probably the only way we know how to play," he says. "You look at the teams who went up and stayed up last season, they didn't sit back, the likes of Norwich and Swansea really went at teams. If we stick to doing what we know we're good at doing, we'll be OK."
Adkins is acquainting his team with a new 4-3-3 formation in case the side's more familiar 4-4-2 does not trouble teams of the quality of today's opponents, Manchester City. But he insists that irrespective of the system he uses, he knows where he wants Lallana to be. "Wherever the ball is," he replies when asked to identify the best position of a player who has been deployed all across midfield. "I like to think we've added a fluidity of movement so we don't restrict players to one position but allow them to get on the ball and create things. He's one of the most talented players at doing that. Premier League supporters are going to enjoy watching Adam Lallana."