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Preview Percy has been so overcome with gratitude at his present of a club shop discount that he will probably be too overwhelmed to use it. Which, one suspects, is what the owners may have been hoping. Here’s his look at the boxing day trip to Southampton...

Next up we fill up the tuck box with turkey sandwiches as we make our way down to the St Mary’s area of Southampton for a festive fixture with a kick-off at the sainted hour of 3pm.




No trains of course and, speaking from personal experience, traffic in the city can be a real sod on Boxing Day as the so-called January sales start. I believe there is a bus service running in the city so it might be worthwhile parking in the outer suburbs and hopping on one of those.

So Southampton, then. Oh dear. Even at this stage of the season it’s looking bit bleak for them. Their record this season reads played 17, won one, drawn three, lost 13. Their last six has seen them lose at home to Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham (2-3, 1-5 and 0-5 respectively), pick up two points from away draws at Brighton (1-1) and Fulham (0-0) and lose 1-0 away at Villa.

They were a bit unlucky not to take Liverpool to penalties, benefiting from a typical refereeing decision in favour of the Scousers at the death, referee Chris Kavanagh adhering to the PGMOL rule that you only give free-kicks against Liverpool if there are firearms involved in the offence. It seems the authorities have stuck their pension funds on a Liverpool League Cuo win judging by the rigged home draw, to dodgy decisions in both subsequent games.

Back to Southampton and bottom on six points with an eight-point gap to the safety refuge of 17th in a season that has seen one win in 18 – and even that was against Everton – is the sort of form that sees managers sacked. So they sacked the manager.

Exit Russell Martin and enter Croatian coach Ivan Juric. Juric arrived after a less than inspiring spell with Roma, lasting less than two calendar months at the end of which he left i giallorossi hovering above the Serie A trapdoor a mere four points above the relegation zone.

All things are relative of course and I’m sure Southampton fans would give their right arms to be in such a spot at present. However, the length of Juric’s contract might be a bit of a giveaway as to his brief. An 18-month deal simply screams “do what you can this season but your main job is to get us back up next year”.

Daisy’s been in an odd mood this week. She has been threatening all sorts of repercussions if her Christmas present comes from the Esso Garage down the road. As if – there’s a much better selection at the BP garage in the opposite direction which is more handily located opposite the Swan and Superinjunction pub.

I think her angst may have been caused by seeing the list of players that they signed over the summer. No fewer than 27 of them, including loan players. She whittled than number down a bit by leaving out those that were immediately loaned out, those that were signed for Academy development and those that she simply couldn’t be bothered with, so relatives of the splendidly-named Baylee Dipepa are likely to be disappointed. Unless they count that mention.

The first player to pass the Daisy triage process (hmmm I’m sure I have a Daisy Triage Process album somewhere in the collection) was defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis. Harwood-Bellis was one of those who wasn’t actually a new signing as such.

He spent most of last season on loan at St Mary’s from Man City, the terms of the loan providing that Southampton would have to buy the player for £20m if they were promoted. They were, so they dd. Harwood-Bellis made his England debut in the recent 5-0 win over Ireland, scoring in the process. His goal was welcomed with gritted teeth by his future father-in-law Roy Keane.




They picked up former player Adam Lallana on a free from Brighton. At 36 he’s probably grateful for somewhere to go other than the library these days. They raided Burnley and Peterborough for defenders Charlie Taylor and Ronnie Edwards respectively. Nothing particularly spectacular about those deals except that the player names hark back to the days of my youth. Proper football names. None of your Taylors, Flynns or double-barrelled surname nonsense, just good old fashioned Charlie and Ronnie.

Talking of Flynns, they loan deal that saw Flynn Downes help them gain promotion last year was made permanent in a deal reported to be worth £15m. A lifelong Hammer, Downes was an unused sub that night in Prague which means that he has one more winners medal than Harry Kane. Which is nice.

Lots of clubs will be thinking “we may have dodged a bullet there” looking at the career of Ben Brereton-Diaz since he left Blackburn during a moderately successful spell at Ewood Park. Having gone through and been released by the youth systems at Manchester United and Stoke he ended up at Nottingham Forest.

Eight goals in 53 league appearances suggested that some early promise might not be that easy to fulfil and he went on loan to Blackburn in 2018, with £7m being sufficient to make the deal permanent in January 2019. He seemed to find his niche in Lancashire, particularly in 2021-22 where he scored 22 goals in 37 appearances in the league.

The stats dropped off a bit in 2022/23 when he scored 14 in 43, but this wasn’t enough to dissuade Villareal from picking up the player on a free once his contract at Ewood had expired. His spell with the “Yellow Sumbarine” was not what you might call prolific and following 14 games without a goal, it was decided that the player’s future lay elsewhere.

A half-season loan at Sheffield United ensued which saw him score his first against us in the infamous Michael Salisbury “I don’t care what I have to do, this is finishing as a draw” match. However, newly-promoted Southampton were always going to be a better pull than a freshly relegated and out of options to falsely blame anyone else Sheffield United.

The Saints picked him up for a relatively cheap £7m, making Villareal’s accountants rather happy at the paper profit percentage. If the player had hoped for an instant boost to his career however, he didn’t get it and he’s without a goal in 10 league appearances this season.

Making a slightly more significant contribution to a “goals for” column somewhat lacking in content is Cameron Archer. His goal in the League Cup against Liverpool was a corker and, whilst he s only joint top scorer in the League with two, overall he has the lead taking into account all competitions with a further three in the League Cup to his name. Archer cost £15m to bring in from Villa for whom he had failed to score in the league, his career there being largely punctuated by loan spells elsewhere.

We should mention poor old Maxwel Cornet who wouldn’t have been eligible to play in this one anyway. However having elected to revive his injury-hit career down at St Mary’s he would appear to have played for them even less than he did for us, though he doesn’t seem to be on the injured list.

At this point Daisy decided that she’d had enough and went to find The Great Escape on the box – she loves that film though she does have a few words to say on the standard of tunnel construction. So with that in mind we shall move on to the festive edition of The Wild And Wacky World Of Association Football, which frankly, is pretty much the same as every other edition, apart from the inclusion of the word “festive” in the intro.




The boss said I had to show a bit more festive spirit, so consider that contractual obligation now fulfilled. And on the naughty step this week is Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk who has tested positive for an as yet unspecified substance and, as with every other athlete in the same situation, has professed complete ignorance of how whatever it was got into his system.

“David Coote told me it was just some smelling salts that referees use all the time and if you can’t trust a referee….” Is just one of the things our lawyers have asked us to make clear that the player never said.

Up on Merseyside, Everton’s takeover by the Friedkin Group has been completed. They also own the aforementioned Roma whose fortunes have improved sine they dispensed with the services of Juric who, if you were paying attention earlier, you will have noted were four points off the drop zone when Juric was sacked. Everton are also four points off the drop zone at the time of writing. Better stock up on those throat pastilles while you have the chance, Mr Dyche.

And so to us. A good point against Brighton out of what was a pretty poor game overall. The second half was better I suppose and we rode our luck a couple of times but a point was the right result.

Yet again we found ourselves in the hands of Rob Jones who would have got more decisions correct had he sat in the changing room blindfold and tossed a coin as to which way to give a free-kick or a foul. Poor old Paqueta picked up a yellow for something that had happened to him on numerous occasions during the match, Liverpool tactic no.1 being very much in play for the visitors on Saturday.

Jones ought to be on a suspension for his decision to award only a yellow for the challenge by Estupinan on Max Kilman. In what perverted universe does a reckless, out of control, two-footed jump over the top of the ball only merit a yellow? I’m not sure if VAR looked at it or if PGMOL have come out with their usual retrofitted lies to back up their employee, but the only thing more disgusting than the challenge was Jones’s reaction to it.

On the absence front, I think it’s fair to say that Micky Antonio may be a fair bit away from a return, but I’ll mention him every week so that he knows we haven’t forgotten him. Mavropanos faces a 50/50 injury test on a knock that saw him miss the second half on Saturday, while Paqueta misses out after his yellow against Brighton made it five for the season.

However, on the bright side, Carlos Soler will return to the squad having served his one match suspension. The press conference earlier this week suggested that two unnamed players were nursing injuries. I have no idea whether that included Mavropanos or not as the boss was remaining tight-lipped on the subject.

So to the prediction. Well we have already had one new manager bounce defeat this season, though to be fair we ought to have won that by a mile – yet another bundle of poor refereeing decisions contributing as much to the result as Leicester did.

This is a game where there may be some initial enthusiasm from the home side but an early-ish goal would see the heads go down and, despite our reputation as sequence-busters, that is what I see happening. So, the £2 that, thanks to the oh so generous Christmas present from the club, I could have spent in the club shop, will instead be going on an away win. I make it 3-1 to us please Mr Winstone.

Enjoy the game!




When Last We Met At St Mary’s: Drew 1-1 (Premier League October 2022)

One of those “how on earth did we not win that one” games. They opened the scoring with a goal that owed much to the block on Bowen by referee Bankes who also missed the foul throw from which it came. To add insult to injury Peraud’s shot was probably covered by Fabianski but for the deflection it took. Bankes wasn’t in any mood to try and referee the game properly and the judo throw that saw Soucek thrown to the ground summed up the fact that it was going to take something special to beat the twelve men Southampton were fielding. And something special is what we got with Rice’s curled drive levelling the scores with just over an hour played. The home goal led a charmed life to say the least but a draw was all we got.

Referee Lewis Smith

A new one for us. Nothing to suggest he will be any more competent than the rest of them but we live in hope.

Danger Man: Cameron Archer

Good goal against Liverpool and about as prolific a goalscorer as they have at the moment.

Percy and Daisy’s Southampton Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Jona Lewie, the man responsible for that awful Stop The Cavalry thing that gets trotted out this time every year, was born in Southampton. Given that Craig David and the drummer out of Coldplay are from that part of the world the place has a lot to answer for, though they are forgiven everything for producing Mike Holmes and Martin Orford.


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