£800k Southampton FC gamble handed Saints a club legend - he rescued them from relegation | OneFootball

His later career was blighted by injury, but Marians Pahars was a surprise hit at Southampton and remains a cult hero among their fans to this day.

When Southampton signed striker Marians Pahars from the Latvian club FC Skonto in February 1999, few would have predicted he'd become one of Saints' all-time great strikers.

Pahars' £800k arrival on the south coast came about as a result of a conversation between two English managers. Gary Johnson had recently been appointed as the head coach of the Latvia national team at the start of 1999, and Pahars was already a regular in that team by this point.

By this time, Pahars' goal-scoring record was starting to attract attention across Europe, but it was Johnson who recommended him to the Southampton manager of the time, Dave Jones. When brought to England for a trial in February for a week's trial and a match for the reserves against Oxford United, he scored a perfect hat-trick - left foot, right foot, head - in a 7-1 win.

It took an effort to get him to this country in the first place. There were complaints from the PFA, and his first two applications for a work permit were refused. Southampton appealed the decisions, and they were eventually overturned.

Pahars' influence at Southampton was almost immediate

Pahars finally made his debut for the Saints against Coventry at the start of April, and his impact was almost immediate. On the last day of the 1998/99 season, with Southampton needing a win to ensure that they couldn't be relegated, he scored both goals as they beat Everton 2-0 to guarantee their survival.

Southampton moved to St Mary's in the summer of 2001, and Pahars scored the Saints' first league goal there on the 24th September, albeit only a consolation in a 3-1 home defeat by Aston Villa. Two months later he also scored their first winning goal in a league match win there, against Charlton Athletic.

That season, though, wasn't a disaster for Southampton. Pahars formed a deadly attacking partnership with James Beattie, with the pair scoring 26 league goals between them. With that first win behind them, they lifted themselves away from the relegation places and up to 11th in the final table for that season.

Injuries limited Pahars' impact, but his cult hero status remains

But St Mary's turned out not to be the panacea for Southampton's limitations that the club had been hoping for, and in 2005 they were relegated from the Premier League after 27 years' unbroken service.

By this time, Pahars was an increasingly peripheral figure around their first team, on account of some terrible luck with injuries. He required an operation for a hernia in the summer of 2002, and his fitness never really returned afterward, with a string of injuries to his ankle requiring three operations.

Having made exactly 100 Premier League appearances for the Saints prior to this operation, he would make just 23 appearances over the next three, including none at all during the 2004/05 relegation season. He missed the whole of that season after injuring himself in a pre-season friendly at Swindon.

He eventually returned for the 2005/06 season, making ten appearances for them in the Championship. In total, he made 156 league appearances and scored 45 goals in all competitions.

But a cult hero is a cult hero, and Southampton fans have much to remember Pahars fondly by, whether we're talking about the first league goal and the first winning goal for Southampton in their current stadium, that relegation escape of 1999, or even scoring against Portsmouth in the first league meeting between these two bitter rivals in almost 16 years.

Disrupted by injuries he may have been, but Pahars remains a fondly-remembered name at the club.