It’s almost 2 years ago since we asked How’s Thierry Small getting on with the Saints? Things have moved on considerably since then, with the 19-year-old now into his second month of a short-term contract at Charlton Athletic.

Small became the Toffees’ youngest senior player when Carlo Ancelotti gave him his first-team debut in a 2021 FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday, aged 16 years and 176 days.

But that was not enough to persuade the then 17-year-old defender to sign a very generous 3-year professional contract with the Blues, ending 6 years with the Academy when he ripped up his scholarship agreement and secured a somewhat acrimonious move to the South Coast, with Everton rejecting Southampton’s £1.5M initial offer of a development fee.

The highly rated young left-back was expected to sign his first professional contract with Everton when he turned 17 on 1 August 2021, but had made it known that he felt his advancement would be stalled with Lucas Digne and Niels Nkounkou ahead of him at that time.

“It was unbelievable for me and my family,” Small told London News Online. “When I moved to Everton I was in digs. I made a lot of sacrifices to be there. I left home at an early age.

“So when I was on the pitch it was like: ‘We have achieved something really great – we beat the statistics (for the amount of academy player who fall by the wayside)’. It was beautiful to experience.

“It was my first year in full-time football. I had just finished school and went straight into a scholarship – everything was brand new to me.

“I was grateful to be playing football and getting your little scholar wages. I was just made up. Everything happened so quickly – but I wouldn’t have had it any way differently.”

“The way Everton was, I wish I could’ve left on better terms,” said Small. “The way it came out wasn’t completely true – there was a lot of false speculation about the move to Southampton.”

It seems things just didn’t pan out as hoped for, with the young Everton Academy prodigy notching up only 45 minutes for the Southampton first team before they all agreed to rip up his contract, which allowed him to join Charlton Athletic in League One as a free agent at the end of the recent transfer window.

“Going there was just a family decision to better my career. You have got to take risks – sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don’t, it’s just part of life.