Gordon Strachan led Southampton to the FA Cup final in 2003 and he believes Tonda Eckert's side can beat Manchester City and continue their quest to replicate the famous 1976 side
Shea Charles (R) of Southampton celebrates
Shea Charles sent Southampton to Wembley with the winner against Arsenal(Image: Matt Watson/Getty Images)
View 4 Images
Gordon Strachan was there two years ago when Southampton were last at Wembley to play Leeds in the Championship play-off final. Despite seeing a 1-0 win and promotion, he’s hoping this time around might be a better spectacle. “Cost me a fortune for tickets and it was a horrendous game!”
“Everyone was so nervous, even the fans were nervous,” he adds. “I don’t know if those games are exciting or just pure torture because the consequences – and that’s not going to be there against Man City. There are no real consequences.”
Southampton are brimming with confidence ahead of their FA Cup semi-final against City on Saturday. Tonda Eckert’s side are on a 20-game unbeaten streak and are still buzzing from their 2-1 win over Arsenal in the previous round.
Strachan managed Saints between 2001 and 2004 and has been delighted by their revival after a miserable start to the season under Will Still, which now feels like a distant memory on the south coast. “It’s kind of mind-blowing. A couple of months ago you were going, ‘Jesus, what a state they’re in’ and then suddenly all of this started,” he tells Mirror Football as an ambassador for Coventry Building Society.
“It just shows you what momentum does for a football club and it spirals into the fans joining in. They were at the depths and now they’re going ‘what happened there?’ Now there’s this wonderful explosion of energy all over the place and it’s great. Unfortunately I don’t live anywhere near Southampton now because it would be a great place to be right now.
“If you say to me ‘Do you think they’ll win the game?’ I’d say no, because that’s my head. But I’ve seen things in football that make you scratch your head and it’ll need to be one of those ones if Southampton beat Man City. It’ll be way up there.
“I know they’ve won the cup and they got to the final when I was there, but really if they beat Man City it’ll be way up there, it’ll be as good as it gets. They’ve got to have belief. What Southampton and their fans have shown is that they’re not scared of anybody now. There’s a big difference between respecting them and being scared of them.
Players of Southampton celebrate after the team's victory in the Emirates FA Cup Quarter Final match between Southampton and Arsenal
Southampton beat Arsenal 2-1 in the FA Cup quarter-final earlier in April(Image: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
View 4 Images
“So if you can do that to Arsenal, you can do it to Man City. There's no doubt about that. But what you’ve done is given Man City a warning, that’s the only thing you’ve not got in your favour now: Man City have seen this and know what they’ll be faced with.”
Strachan led Saints to the FA Cup final in 2003 in a match that carries some parallels with the current situation. While they were then a Premier League side, Southampton were clear underdogs, facing an Arsenal team who had won the 2002 FA Cup and were making a third straight appearance in the final. Then there was the fact that Saints had been thrashed 6-1 by Arsenal just nine days beforehand.
“They (Arsenal) were in a good position in the league,” Strachan remembers. “We played them a few weeks previous but we didn’t give anything away. We got beat 6-1 but we didn’t do any real preparation for that game, because I didn’t want to give anything away because we were going to do something different in the final and I made sure Arsenal didn’t know.
Gordon Strachan
Gordon Strachan has enjoyed watching Saints' revival
View 4 Images
“We had to take a hit and feel bad about ourselves but I reassured the players that there was a reason behind it. Fortunately we put up a much better showing in the final and we got beat 1-0 by one of the best teams of all time.
“People say ‘oh, go and enjoy the final’ but not really, if you’re going to get beaten by five, six or seven. There was a bit of nervousness to our play early on, but the more the game went on, the more comfortable we felt in the system that we were playing.”
Asked if he played into the underdogs tag to get a reaction from his players, Strachan is unequivocal. “I was never into that kind of stuff with underdogs. I did what we did week in, week out with the preparation,” he says. “We had to change the system a bit. All you had to do was pick the right team and the right system.
“There’s no use in talking about being underdogs. I suppose you could but I never did. I just used the occasion – what it meant for everybody at the club, what we’d done to get here, the fans and the families remembering it for ever.”
The Southampton team lineup for a photo before the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Southampton on May 17, 2003 at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.
Southampton wore yellow in their 2003 FA Cup final defeat by Arsenal(Image: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
View 4 Images
Saints will be channelling their history when they step out onto the Wembley pitch on Saturday evening. The club have been granted special dispensation by the FA to wear a special yellow kit in commemoration of their 1976 FA Cup final win, when the second-division side shocked Manchester United.
Strachan’s team donned yellow 23 years ago, and although it didn’t inspire another upset, it made a difference – and not just to the club’s finances. “I just remember that [chairman] Rupert Lowe was delighted that we got the away trip because it meant Southampton supporters had to buy the yellow stuff, which made the club a fortune! He was delighted at losing the toss of the coin.
“And in fact, it made the occasion, the sea of yellow that day. I remember standing on the touchline going ‘wow’. I said to some of the players to have a look around and they were the same.”
Southampton’s class of 2026 now have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the famous 1976 side. “It’s another chance for the players to make history,” Strachan says. “That’s their thing. It doesn’t matter about money, kudos, or social media. The fact is you’ll be able to go down memory lane 20 years later, when you’ll still be talking about it.”
All Together Better – To find out more about Coventry Building Society, visit thecoventry.co.uk