Southampton: Rickie Lambert speaks about unbelievable moment where Alan Pardew transformed his career

Southampton striker Rickie Lambert will go down as one of the club’s best ever goalscorers after a brilliant five-year spell on the South Coast.

In all, he scored 117 goals in 230 appearances for the Saints to fire them from League One to the Premier League and also proved his creative worth with 64 assists during that time too

However – by his own admission – he was never the fittest player and has spoken about the comments from his first Saints manager Alan Pardew that changed his career.

Speaking on the new Southampton FC podcast, Le Pod, the 37-year-old said:

"“I just thought the manager was made up with me – I was scoring goals and doing what I’d always done. He (Pardew) called me in and said ‘I’ve been watching you around the place; you’re an absolute disgrace.’“Then he said ‘show me your belly’. So I had to show him my belly, and it was the most embarrassing moment of my career. I was literally in every morning at 9 doing fat burners and all kinds, and I think I lost about a stone within three months.”"

This seemed to be the spark that caused Lambert to transform from the bully of a target man that arrived from Bristol Rovers to the all-round striker that he became.

His first season at St Mary’s was actually his best for goalscoring as he found the net no less than 37 times.

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This proved that Saints were absolutely correct to shell out a fee of around £1m on him as they looked to get back to the Championship at the first attempt.

Under Alan Pardew, things took a while to get going and Saints didn’t win their first league game until well into September. A superb run of results would then only see them finish in seventh and just outside the League One play-offs.

Pardew was then sacked at the beginning of the next season, but he left a vital component of seasons to come with a now motivated Lambert.

The big Liverpudlian went on to fire Saints to successive promotions in the next two campaigns and continued scoring in the Premier League before leaving the club in the summer of 2014.

The pinnacle of his career – representing England and scoring on his debut in a 3-2 win over Scotland at Wembley – also came whilst he was still with Saints.

Subsequent moves to Liverpool, West Brom and Cardiff City saw him unable to show his true worth, but he will forever be associated with Saints.