Football is littered with stories of extraordinary success, and many will tell you that this is what it is all about at the end of the day. But, sometimes the quote on quote lesser successes can be far more important to a club than even the most prestigious ones.
Here are seven examples of players who did this by saving their teams from falling apart:
Jermain Defoe joined Sunderland in January 2015, with the club desperately teetering on the edge of relegation from the Premier League. Five months later, and Defoe was the club's second highest scorer for the entire season, with his most important (and certainly most iconic) goal coming from a screaming 25-yard volley against Newcastle.