On Tuesday 3rd March 2009 Saints played Ipswich Town at Portman Road, almost exactly 3 years later the 2 clubs meet again but in entirely different circumstances, at least for Southampton Football Club.

When Saints travelled to Portman Road on that March evening they were in disarray, but there was light at the end of the tunnel, two straight wins meant they now sat third from bottom, three points behind Nottingham Forest but with a game in hand, Ipswich still harnoured hopes of a play off spot, they sat tenth on 50 points, only 4 points behind Bristol City occupying sixth position, on paper it looked a home banker.

However the form book was to be turned upside down, Saints controlled the game from start to finish although for most of the game they only had a 30th minute goal from Jason Euell to thank for it, however in the final ten minutes Saints ran rampant with Euell adding a second on 85 minutes and three minutes later Matt Paterson sealing the game for a 3-0 win to give hope that Saints might just get out of relegation after all.

Sadly Forest had won their midweek game, but Saints were now only two points behind Blackpool, Barnsley and Watford with Forest three ahead, there was suddenly hope that perhaps Saints could pull off a miracle after all, although as we all know we would win only one more game all season and would be in admin within a month.

Only two players remain at St Mary's from the starting line up that night, Kelvin Davis and Morgan Schneiderlin although Bart Bialkowski was on the bench as well.

In these three short years so much has happened to Southampton Football Club, in March 2009 we were opredicting that most of it would be bad, yes some of it was, but here we are back and challenging again after going down to our lowest league standing in 50 years and having to rebuilt an entire squad.

Three years is a short time in footballing terms, or it always used to be, nowadays though with the big turnover of both players and managers a lot more gets crammed in, in those short years.

Photo: Action Images

geezershoong added 13:15 - Mar 6 Indeed, we are a healthy club now with ambition & a table topping squad. Who do we have to thank for it?
0

Southampton Polls