Talbot played midfield, wearing the number four shirt, and started with Ipswich Town, with whom he won the FA Cup in 1978 and thus became (I think) the only player to win the Cup two seasons running with different teams. He also set up what I think is another record, playing 70 matches in a season, in the 1979/80 season – when he played all 42 league games.
Indeed overall he missed very few games over the coming years, until he left in the summer of 1985 going to Watford. After that he went to Stoke, WBA, Fulham and Aldershot, and was for four years chair of the PFA.
During his time at WBA he was player manager before leaving after his team were beaten by Woking and going down to the 3rd division.
What then endeared him even further to my heart was the fact that in 1997 he became coach of Rushden and Diamonds – a Northamptonshire non-league team who rose from nowhere and got into the third tier of the football league, before sadly running out of money. It was Talbot who secured the team’s promotion to the Football League – (and indeed on a personal note I can say I was there for the final match which secured promotion).
He later became manager and the club got into the third division before he left to be manager of Oldham and later Oxford United. In February 2011, he joined Fulham as European scout. He was promoted to chief scout and assistant director of football operations in February 2017.