Tony Cottee has publicly thanked Phil Thompson who he met up with today for the return of the Premier League after the International break.

Posting a photo of the pair of them  Cottee posted on social media: “A chance to properly thank this man, my hero. Phil Thompson was there for me when I fell ill in my hotel. Without Tommo, no doctor, no ambulance, no treatment. Thank you Tommo, I’ll never forget what you did for me that day”

The former Liverpool and England player helped Tony Cottee when he unexpectantly fell ill in a London hotel this summer. Thompson recognised Cottee was in a bad way and immediately called a doctor.

Cottee TalkSPORT last Wednesday morning: “July 8 this year, I was meant to be filming an advert for Sky. I was staying in London because it’s a long way for me to get in for 8:30am. I’m in my room the night before not doing anything out of the ordinary, and I got a small pain to begin with in the middle of my forehead, and within five minutes it was the worst headache of my life. I then had really severe neck pains, and through the night I was sick four times. Obviously I’m meant to be working in the morning.

“I rang my missus and told her I’d been ill through the night and she asked if there was anyone at the hotel. Luckily for me Phil Thompson was there, so I rang him and asked him to come to my room. So he came to my room and said, ‘wow, you look awful!. Originally they thought I had meningitis which was scary, and then they found I had a small bleed on my brain – basically a small brain haemorrhage. Immediately I was transferred to Charing Cross Hospital, and I can’t speak highly enough of the nurses and doctors; they were unbelievable at both West Middlesex and Charing Cross.

“They did all the tests… I had a lumbar puncture, I had an angiogram, I had an MRI scan. They wanted to check because I could have had an aneurysm, I could have had a stroke, I could have had a heart attack – I could have dropped dead. I was lucky, even though they said it was a major trauma. I can’t fly for the rest of the year, and I had to have six weeks’ rest. I couldn’t work while waiting for the results to come through.”