mikec

Hmm, Liverpool at home on the final day. I can see it now. Saints need to win to stay up, Liverpool need a point to clinch the title. Still 0-0 going into the 4th minute of stoppage time. Scousers already starting to celebrate. But Adams suddenly breaks into the area. He's hacked down by Van Dyke. Red card for Virgil, penalty to Saints. JWP buries it, final whistle goes, Saints fans go wild, Ralph and Klopp both start to cry. And then I wake up.

Leeds would, but Everton and Burnley still have 3 games left after tonight (and a better goal difference) so they would just need 4 and 6 points respectively from their 3 games to finish above us. This is assuming we don't pick up any more points and that Watford-Everton stays 0-0. Chelsea have just got a 3rd so Leeds would now have to overturn an 18 goal difference to finish above us. Even allowing for us having to play Liverpool, I would cautiously suggest that we are probably safe - maybe.

(I haven't read all 46 pages so sorry if this was previously posted) A student takes a gap year to do some travelling. He visits the US and hires a car to make a coast-to-coast trip. One day in the middle of nowhere, he stops at a small town and goes into a bar. In the corner he sees a Native American man sitting on his own. He orders a drink and gets chatting to the barman and he asks him about the guy in the corner. "Oh that's Bill," replies the barman "he has the most amazing memory and remembers every fact he's ever heard. Go and ask him any question and I bet he can answer it." The student thinks he will catch him out with a question about English football and, being a Saints fan, he walks over to the Native American and says "Hi, can you tell me who won the FA Cup in 1976?" "Southampton" comes the immediate reply. "Who did they beat and what was the score?" "They beat Manchester United 1-0" "Who scored the winning goal?" "Bobby Stokes" The student is amazed. When he gets home from his trip he tells all his friends about the incredible memory man and vows that one day, he will return to try and speak with him again. But life got in the way and 20 years passed by before he finally had the opportunity to take some time off and return to the US and try to retrace the route from his previous trip. Everything had changed and he struggled to remember the exact route that he took before. Just as he was giving up hope on the last day of his trip, by some fluke, he found himself in the same small town as before. To his delight the bar was still there and when he walked in, the same man was sitting in the corner. This time he thinks he should treat the Native American with a bit more respect and greet him in an appropriate manner. He walks over to the man, raises a hand and says "How!" "A left-footed shot into the corner in the 83rd minute" comes the reply.

Yes it was pretty impressive how they managed to get it printed and delivered to newsagents by about 6pm. In my youth (60s/70s) it was generally known as the "Football Echo" and had all the results, updated tables, a full report of the Saints match, plus shorter reports from the Pompey, Bournemouth and Saints Reserves games. In addition it would have a dozen or so brief reports of Hampshire League and other local games in the inside pages. And they managed this with manual printing presses and many years before mobile phones and the internet.

But you had to buy a programme (or try to look over the shoulder of someone who had one) to work out which score related to which game.

True. How many times has a referee done a pitch-side review and then stuck with his original decision/non-decision? No doubt, it has happened but it seems to be pretty rare.

Turned out to be a good buy and played a big part in our 1976 FA Cup win. He scored the winning goal against Bradford in the quarter-final and in the final, it was McCalliog that laid on the pass to Bobby Stokes for the goal.

Haven't they suffered enough?

I don't think we even sold out our allocation last time we got to the semis vs Chelsea in 2018. I had no trouble getting a ticket even though I hadn't been to many games that year and there were loads of empty seats where I was. The fact that tickets were £90+ may have had something to do with it.

If you have a BT sport subscription, you should be able to watch it online.

Nice idea but I'm pretty sure that it's now only the FA Cup winners that are guaranteed the Europa League spot. If they already qualify then I don't think it is passed to the runners-up like it used to be - and it certainly wouldn't go to semi-finalists.

Indeed. Checking my copy of "In That Number", it would probably have been Sheffield Wednesday that West Stand saw as they were in Division 2 with Saints that year. If it was them, the home game against them in the 1946/47 season was actually played on 19 Apr 1947 and Saints won 3-1 with 2 goals from Jack Bradley and 1 from Don Roper. Bradley also missed a penalty.

My first trip to the Dell was when my uncles took me to a Saints reserves game against West Ham reserves in 1967. Saints scored first but ended up losing 1-2. I suppose it set me up properly for a lifetime of brief hope and ultimate disappointment. My first first-team game was a few months later against West Brom which we won 4-0 (Davies(2), Paine and Chivers).

You are assuming that Leicester win on Wednesday as well. If they don't and we win, we'll be top for a whole 2 hours until the Liverpool/Spurs games finishes.

By my reckoning: Today, Everton v Man Utd - draw or Man Utd win Tomorrow, West Brom v Spurs - draw or West Brom win Leicester v Wolves - Wolves win (by less than 4) Man City v Liverpool - Man City win

Friday night because it was a live TV game - on BBC I think.

According to Wikipedia, in 1981/82... "Kevin Keegan helped lift the club to the top of the First Division. Southampton led the league for over two months, taking top spot on 30 January 1982 and staying there (apart from one week) until 3 April 1982. But in a disappointing end to the season, in which Keegan was hampered by a back injury, Southampton won only two of their last nine games and finished seventh."

Interesting fact reported by the BBC from tonight's Arsenal Vs Dundalk match - "Dundalk made a bit of history as the first team in the 10 years of the Europa League not to commit a single foul in a game." Must be quite a rare event. Didn't help them much though - they still lost 3-0

I somehow don't think that replacing the presenters of a football chat show qualifies as "evil".

Yes I think he said that he (or a team mate) deliberately kicked the ball out for a throw-in straight from kick-off in a televised game because he had some bet on the time of the first throw-in. However I seem to remember that when people looked at the records, there was no game that matched his description so he either made it up or got the details wrong. Lawrie McMenemey as manager? Wasn't he done for drink-driving? Doubly embarassing as he was on a TV advert for alcohol-free lager at the time.

We always called it the "Football Echo" although I don't think that was ever its real title. I always thought it was an impressive feat to have them printed and on sale by about 6pm on a Saturday evening, especially at those pre-internet times when reports would presumably be phoned in and transcribed. As well as the report on the Saints games they would cover matches involving Saints Reserves, Pompey and Bournemouth and the centre pages would cover a whole bunch of local league games. You could always tell it was a bit rushed though as the first half's would have quite detailed coverage while the second half's would just be restricted to a short summary of any goals - and sometimes not even that for the more minor games.

Scoring 3 to win at Everton but still getting relegated. That will sound familiar to Saints fans of a certain age.

Yeah Foster was really unlucky there wasn't he. Of course as every "You are the ref" fan would know, if the ball had come back off the woodwork rather than the goalie, then it would have been disallowed because no other player would have touched the ball between Sterling's 2 shots.

Even though it only postponed our relegation by a year and lots of great stuff has happened since, that game has remained one of my favourite memories at St Marys. What a rollercoaster match that was.

Sad news. If I remember right, his final game as a player was against us at the Dell.