[theo_luddite]

V

Huddersfield Town v Southamton F.C.
The McGalphsmiths Stadium
Next to The Odeon
Huddersfield
HD1 6PG


Prima Donna League
26th August 2017
Kick Off - 15:00

Town welcome Southampton to The Yorkshire Club on Saturday as we aim to make it 4 wins from 4 in all competitions this season. The Saints are also unbeaten in the League, having drawn 0-0 with Swansea on the opening wekend and then beat Wes' 'Aaam 3-2 the following Saturday. They lost 0-2 at home to a vastly improved (bloody well should be with the brass they've thrown at it) Wolves on Wednesday in The EFL Cup or whatever they want to call it these days. Not only are the clubs no really interested until Wemberlee, The EFL can't even be arsed to put the draw live on any known national media outlet. They twattered it in from Bejing.

So this is their first journey north of the Solent this season and we are the first to see how well they travel. We will of course be welcoming back our former Game Boy and Football Manager 2014 specialist Ross Wilson, their Director of Scouting & Recruitment. In some sad news, he has a vacancy in his department as recently his Senior Recruitment Officer, Bill Green passed away at the age of 66. https://southamptonfc.com/news/2017-08-2...bill-green.

Ross in happier times  



Until very, very recently, like less than 2 weeks ago, Southampton were owned by the Liebherr family from Switzerland. The had funded their return from the dark depths of League 1, where they played some top clubs like Huddersfield Town for a couple of seasons. Liebherr funded them at an eyewatering level in comparison to the few million a year that Deano has throw at it, however the money has been repaid in spades with the likes of Liverpool and Spurs regularly raiding the club for youth team products and even managers along with some cherry picking by Man Utd and Arsenal. Their recruitment, youth system and methods of playing can't be knocked however as they have consistently been in the top half of he Prima Donna League in spite of all the comings and goings.

One or two recent academy prospects that went on to be said to have 'done good Jeff' in recent times include Adam Lallana, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wayne Bridge and Luke Shaw and Gareth Bale.


Two number 9's, a couple of portions of 23, fried rice and some prawn crackers please.

80% of the club however is now yet another Hong Kong Chinese take-away in the shape of a certain Mr. Gao JiSheng. Time will tell if this is a good or a bad thing but Katharina Liebherr still owns the other 20%.

A bit of Saints History

Southampton were founded at St. Mary's Church, on 21 November 1885 by members of the St. Mary's Church of England Young Men's Association. St. Mary's Y.M.A., as they were usually referred to in the local press, played most of their early games on The Common where games were frequently interrupted by pedestrians insistent on exercising their right to roam. So don't be too surprised if the odd fellow finds himself on the wrong side of the barriers on Saturday.

They adopted the name Southampton St. Mary's when the club joined the Southern League in 1894. After winning the Southern League title in 1896–97, the club became a limited company and was renamed Southampton F.C.
Southampton won the Southern League championship for three years running between 1897 and 1899 and again in 1901, 1903 and 1904. During this time, they moved to a newly built £10,000 stadium called The Dell, to the northwest of the city centre in 1898. Although they would spend the next 103 years there, the future was far from certain in those early days and the club had to rent the premises first before they could stump up the cash to buy the stadium in the early part of the 20th century. The club reached the first of their four FA Cup Finals in 1900. On that day, they went down 4–0 to Bury and two years later they would suffer a similar fate at the hands of Sheffield United as they were beaten 2–1 in a replay of the 1902 final.

After World War I, Saints joined the newly formed Football League Third Division in 1920 which split into South and North sections a year later. The 1921–22 season ended in triumph with promotion and marked the beginning of a 31-year stay in the Second Division. In 1925 and 1927, they reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, losing 2–0 and 2–1 to Sheffield United and Arsenal respectively.

Saints were briefly forced to switch home matches to the ground of their local rivals Portsmouth at Fratton Park during World War II when a bomb landed on The Dell pitch in November 1940, leaving an 18-foot crater which damaged an underground culvert and flooded the pitch.

If you want to read more of this have a look at their Wicki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_F.C.

What have they won?

Apart from The F.A. Cup in 1976 where a Bobby Stokes goal that Welsh Whistler Clive Thomas later admitted might have been offside was enough to beat Man Utd 1-0, The Football League Trophy in 2010 (4-1 v Carlisle), bugger all that matters these days. They've been runners up at everything and anything so must be one of the most commonly seen bridesmaids in English Football history.



Most Appearances

Terry Paine - 815

Right out of the Chopper McGill school of football

Most Goals

Mick (Gary Line-Acre) Channon - 228


Favourite Town Player that they knicked off us on the cheap

Without a doubt, Chris Marsden.
He's got no hair but we don't care



Who could cause us some pain?

I'm sure it won't be long before Mr. Poncho Tino has this lot back firing on all cylinders again, hopefully in September, however, despite continually selling off the family silver, there's still a few players around who would walk into most Prima Donna League teams

England Goalie Fraser Forster sands about 6' 19" tall and doesn't have too many teams scoring for fun against him.


Irish Forward Shane Long has scored goals, if not dozens of them, wherever he has played though mostly at West Brom and The Saints


Charlie Austin like Shane Long regularly finds the Onion Bag for Saints since his transfer from cold drizzly Burnalee to the warmth of Southampton via a stop off in Larndan Tarn at QPR.


Nathan Redmond - a regular with England yoof and most recently the U21's, has 1 full cap to his name. He can also pop up in the box fromhis midfield role.


Manolo Gabbiadini - already has 5 goals in only 17 appearances, he gave Wes' 'Aaam more than a thing or two to think about last weekend.


Will he go or will he stay?

Virgil van Dijk needs to get his finger out and do one or the other and soon. His on-off transfer saga to Liverpool has run longer than Coronation Street. They've a week to sort it out, whether he'll play against us is anyone's guess.
.
Please Release Me, Let me Go ......

No I'm not playing that song - try this one ....

I expect to hear this sung at some time during the match and they are one of the few sets of fans that sing the proper words too.



Haven't got time to do my usual stat stuff this week (work-work-busy-busy) so off you go chaps and chapesses. Should be another entertaining game. Get typing.