A moment to savour - must be Gordon Hill (a winger Manure signed from Millwall) being interviewed before the 76 Cup Final, saying " Sarfamtin? Oo a they?", and with it still ringing in your ears watching Bobby Stokes (RIP Bobby) scuff it from 30 yards past a despairing Alex Stepney who'd come out far too early. That's who we were Gordon. The best time? Any time before it started to boil down to money. Eric Martin keeping at the Dell as Cinderella (late to the ball), the announcer saying "please don't arrive too early, you might get a game", standing on a slagheap at Walsall watching us win on a midweek night, standing opposite the Shed at Chelsea watching a young Mick Channon and a portentous Ron Davies, so many things.
This is the most excited I have been as a supporter about the future of the club and I'm from the Le Tissier era, missing on the 80s heights. Ultimately this team has achieved nothing special and we've had plenty of seasons in the last 25 years in mid table of the PL. For me as a fan I'm pretty used to having a good season and then the club failing to follow it up. A manager or top player leaves and it's back to square one. If this was old saints then one of Lambert, Schneiderlin or Cork would be off in the summer. The new contracts, Cortese as a chairman so far and his vision all point towards a change of course. It's a big summer for the club. Keep the current 1st team, buy a couple of quality additions and we have every chance of having a very good season.
The big difference between now and when we were midtable in the past is that you can sense a plan. In our previous spell in the PL, we always knew we would probably struggle...we expected to be in a relegation fight, though sometimes we did well because we had signed a couple of decent players. A nice cup run was all we reasonably expected. There is a direction to Saints that I have never seen before.
