He said he was loving life at Spurs

I’M numb and absolutely devastated by the news that my friend and former teammate Ugo Ehiogu has died aged just 44.

He was a lovely, lovely man, a massive man, yet despite that 6ft-4in frame he was a very, very gentle person.

There was nothing brash about Ugo, no aggression away from the pitch.

He was just a super-friendly human being with that big, shy smile, someone who was very softly spoken and always very cool with those big diamond earrings.

I got to know Ugo when I moved from Liverpool to Aston Villa 20 years ago.

I knew Dwight Yorke (below) anyway, and him, Ugo and Mark Bosnich were the lads I befriended and went on to become really good mates with. Ugo in particular.

We went to Las Vegas together, gambling and having a real good laugh in the clubs, and it’s hard to believe that two decades on he is no longer with us.

Our former Villa manager Brian Little will be devastated and no doubt he and other former managers of Ugo’s, Ron Atkinson and John Gregory, would all say the same: what a complete professional he was and what a great lad to have around the club and the dressing room.

He read the game extremely well and, at odds with his character off the field, was always very aggressive in his defending.

Ugo was always good at attacking set-pieces and defending corners, and he was highly dependable, a trait not every Premier League defender has these days.

I was quite surprised when I learned he had gone into coaching because he wasn’t someone you’d necessarily expect to take that route.

He was quite unassuming, he wasn’t the guy who was going to bark out orders, but he cajoled people, put an arm around them, passed on his experience and showed them how he did things.

The fact he was passionate about his work with Tottenham’s Under-23s was fantastic and he told me just a couple of weeks ago how much he loved it there when we had a really good chat.

Many ex-pros have real difficulties in life after the music of their playing days has stopped, but for Ugo there was happiness both at home and at work.

The fact this has happened so soon after Dalian Atkinson’s death is another reminder of our mortality. Like Dalian, Ugo will be sorely missed. So long, pal, may you rest in peace.