It's a bad sign when you can only remember just how good a player was by looking at the season review videos. It's even worse, of course, if the player is still at your club.
Marian Pahars has not had a good time of late. He hasn't played a game for Saints since last November and it's just been one thing after another.
If it wasn't his ankle, it was a series of nasty viruses. There was his groin operation and then just as he was about fit from that, the coach he was on got hijacked and sped him back to Latvia, where he had to fight off a violent group of post soviet era terrorists.
Okay, I read the last one in the film guide, but nothing would have surprised me, and he's about the same height as Bruce Willis so you never know.
"I think he must go around all the hospitals in Southampton trying to find them or something. It's a crazy situation," said someone else around the same height as Marian last year, who also happens to be the manager of Saints.
It's been that long that the printers of the matchday programmes had to dust off old copies to find out his squad number, when he was in contention for this Saturday's game against Birmingham.
Unfortunately, it wasn't to be and Marian is back keeping Mark Draper company in the treatment room, where Mark lives now apparently.
Marian now has to wait for a scan after he suffered a groin problem in Saints reserve game defeat at the footy boots of Ipswich.