At the top of his game, Louis Saha was a supremely talented centre forward, boasting an intoxicating combination of technical ability, strength, power and deadly accuracy in front of goal.  Alas it took peak fitness for these facets to be fully unveiled and, as through much of his career, his time at Goodison was dogged by a succession of niggling injuries.

A graduate of the famous Clairefontaine football academy, Saha began his career with Metz and joined Fulham as a 21 year old for £2.1 million in 2000, a year after a failed loan move at Newcastle United.  His goals helped propel the London club to the Premier League and after proving his worth in the top flight was a £12.8million acquisition by Manchester United in 2004.

His time at Old Trafford was a qualified success, with 42 goals in a period that won him two Premier League titles, the League Cup and also saw a Champions League win – although he was absent from the United squad for the final.  But there was also a sense that he could have achieved much more and he made just 76 starts spread over 4 ½ injury troubled years.

He joined Everton for an undisclosed fee in the summer of 2008 initially as an understudy to Yakubu. When Yakubu suffered serious injury against Tottenham at the end of November 2008, Saha was called in to deputise but lasted just 60 minutes before himself succumbing to injury, which kept him out for three months.  He recovered to score the winning goal in Everton’s FA Cup quarter final against Middlesbrough and played 70 minutes of the successful semi final victory over Manchester United. In the final against Chelsea he put Everton in front after just 25 seconds – the fastest goal in an FA Cup Final – but it was too little too early and Everton fell to a 2-1 defeat.

Saha’s best form came over the following winter when he seemed to have overcome his previous injury problems and have a sustained run in the team.  A fine brace against Chelsea in a night match at Goodison brought Everton a deserved victory and he agreed a new contract soon afterwards.

‘My game is instinctive,’ he told the March 2010 edition of the Evertonian. ‘I’m not a big thinker. I feel like I’m doing things instinctively at the moment and it’s the way I like to play because I feel that’s when I’m at my best. I don’t really think about the game before I go out to play in it.

‘It’s the way I’ve always been and maybe the reason I made it as a professional. I never got under pressure when I was younger for some reason. I think that’s a quality which has made me the player I am.’

Alas, the injury problems continued to dog him and he could never be relied upon as a regular goalscorer. When Tottenham Hotspur made a surprise move for his services in January 2012, David Moyes let him leave on a free transfer.

A thoughtful, intelligent man in 2012 a thought-provoking book he had written about life as a footballer was published to critical acclaim.