A wry smile plays on the lips of Matt Le Tissier as he ponders the question of where he, the Southampton superstar in his playing pomp, would fit into the Liverpool side currently running away with the Premier League. Assuming he is familiar with the former midfielder’s famously languid style, Jürgen Klopp would no doubt have appreciated Le Tissier’s penchant for the sublime and often preposterously ridiculous in front of goal, although his fabled absence of a serious work ethic would have had the German gnashing his pearly whites in frustration.

“I probably wouldn’t fit into that team because of the system that they play,” concedes Le Tissier, whose YouTube showreel boasts enough wizardry to suggest any top-flight manager would have been glad to have a player of such talents to call upon. Indeed, the former Barcelona maestro Xavi has even claimed to have been obsessed with Le Tissier’s “outrageous, sickening goals” as a kid.

“There’s not really a position there that would suit me. Maybe Roberto Firmino, in the position that he plays, where he’s kind of almost a false No 9, if you like. That would be the only position that might suit me.” And then, the caveat, delivered with a shrug. “But I think we both know the intensity of Liverpool’s pressing when they’re out of possession probably wouldn’t suit me so much.”

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In any interview with Le Tissier, it is obligatory to mention how he famously rejected the option of fighting for major honours with bigger clubs, among them Tottenham and Liverpool, preferring instead to stay a one-club man at Southampton, when a move would almost certainly have helped earn him more than the eight England caps he would argue is a lot more than most footballers have.

He has long been the subject of accusations of a paucity of ambition, which he invariably counters with patience and good grace, always insisting that he stayed on the south coast for no other reason than that he was happy there. “When I was a kid I wanted to play in the First Division and I wanted to play for England,” he says. “I achieved both those ambitions. We had 38 games a season and it didn’t matter if we got beaten in 25 of them, because as long as we stayed up I got to have another go the next year.”

Le Tissier played his best football under the England World Cup winner Alan Ball, who commended his star player’s bravery for always demanding the ball under pressure in difficult areas of the pitch. Does he believe a large part of Liverpool’s success can be attributed to the fact that each and every one of their players seems similarly courageous? “One hundred per cent, yes,” he says. “And that is why they’re so good. They don’t panic. They’ll play out from the back, they’ll make themselves available and they’ll give people options. The most important thing about being on a football pitch is having options. That’s what makes players look good. If you get the ball in possession and you look up and you’ve got three or four options, it’s so much easier just having one or maybe two. It makes the game a lot more simple.”

And the aforementioned pressing? “That too,” he says. “They work so hard as a team. Even those front players … because, inherently, forwards are lazy bastards who just want to stick the ball in the back of the net, but I watch Liverpool and wonder how they’re so good and it is a simple combination of great players working really hard.

“I didn’t have that work ethic. I knew I could play and I thought I could get away without working particularly hard because I could do stuff that other people couldn’t. This is a team of players with very, very good ability, who are all prepared to work like a centre midfielder who hasn’t got a lot of ability.”

The introduction of VAR this season has exercised many professionals, current and former, with Gary Lineker telling the Guardian last week that video assistant referees have been “hamstrung by the laws of the game”. The pedantic interpretation of the offside law, with its accompanying lines and dots, is a particular source of irritation for Lineker, but his is not a view with which Le Tissier, who is largely in favour of the technology, concurs.

“I love fairness and this brings a bigger degree of fairness to football than what we had before,” he says. “The key thing for me is that everyone is now playing by the same rules. If it’s an offside, everyone is being judged on those lines and dots and it’s the same for the whole division. That has never always been the case. People look at all the negatives VAR brings without looking at the positives. And that, for me, means that now, most of the time, the team that should have won the game has won the game. VAR adds an extra layer of drama.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matt Le Tissier celebrates during a 2-1 win over Newcastle United at the Dell in 1998. Photograph: Phil Cole/Allsport

But so do refereeing errors, which don’t take as long. “But that’s cheating,” says Le Tissier. “Some decisions are so bad, they can only be cheating.” It’s a bold claim; is the Sky Soccer Saturday staple suggesting top-flight referees are corrupt? “No, I’m saying that they’re human and they’re easily influenced,” he says. “Cheating is probably a strong word, but they’re definitely … influenced. I’ve spoken to referees from my era who have openly admitted they were influenced by Sir Alex Ferguson when they were refereeing at Old Trafford. I speak to Phil Thompson about the decisions Liverpool got when they were playing at Anfield in the 1970s and 1980s. He’s very open about how they influenced the referees. That, for me, is the ultimate reason you have to have VAR in place, to stop that from happening.”

During Le Tissier’s time with Southampton, the club achieved three top-10 finishes but were better known for a series of nervy flirtations with relegation between 1992 and 1999. On one occasion they survived on goal difference, while they ended the season just a point clear of the drop on three others. In May 1999 they finished fourth from bottom again, albeit with a comparatively comfortable five-point cushion. This is a player who knows a thing or two about relegation battles and how to survive them. On a day when he is talking on behalf of PayPal, official payments partner of the FA, about its free Matchday App initiative for grassroots clubs, what advice does he have for those fighting to stay in the Premier League?

“You have to show character,” he says. “I really enjoyed the challenge of it so I didn’t mind relegation battles and I didn’t really feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was always quite positive about them. Getting relegated is a blow to your ego. Being in a relegated side is a stain on your CV and it’s a bit of a stigma really. I never wanted that on my CV.”

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Before an impressive turnaround masterminded by Ralph Hasenhüttl, Southampton looked Championship bound as they slumped to a humiliating 9-0 defeat at the hands of Leicester on a wild, rainswept October night at St Mary’s. It was a drubbing so comprehensive it prompted a mass exodus of home fans after just 19 minutes, but a traumatised Le Tissier stuck it out until the bitter end.

“I couldn’t leave because I was in the boardroom and I couldn’t get past the chief exec,” he says, laughing. “But seriously, I don’t leave. No matter how bad it gets – and that was as bad as it gets – I didn’t feel like I wanted to leave. I thought it was an amazing performance by Leicester, as much as I hated sitting there watching it. By the end I was embarrassed.

“Going down to 10 men and losing a goal in the process on this horrible evening weather-wise was like a perfect storm. It was one of those nights, but looking back on it, it was a real wake-up call for our team. They were embarrassed and most of their performances since then have been much, much better. The players let the club down that evening, if I’m honest.”

It is a stinging accusation that few, if any, Southampton fans have ever levelled at their favourite son.