David May gives us his thoughts on the upcoming Southampton game in the FA Cup and also his own memories of playing in the Cup and at Southampton.
“The FA Cup brings back some amazing memories, winning the trophy against Liverpool and Newcastle being the obvious highlights, I will go into much more detail about them when we reach the final!!! We have played the Saints a few times recently in the FA Cup, beating them easily in 2009 and 2005. It’s sad that a lot of the teams choose to rest players when these games come around but that is the way the game has gone the last ten years. Up until the early nineties no manager in England would dare rest “the star players” because as a young lad it was the trophy we all dreamed of winning. The Champions League has taken over, good thing or bad thing you can decide.
Southampton have been doing pretty well in League One this season so I don’t think we can play the reserves, I would expect them to get promoted at the end of the campaign and they have a few interesting players that could probably make it at a higher level. Rickie Lambert scores plenty of goals, Adam Lallana is creative and everyone is raving about Alex Chamberlain. I’ve got to be honest I haven’t seen much of the kid, just a few highlights on Sky Sports News but I do know the Gaffer watched him the other night, it will be interesting to see where he ends up!!!
I’ve had loads of emails reminding me of the games I played against Southampton back in 1996.
I can’t say they are my favourite memories but a lot of fans look back and asked what happened. The first game we were 3-0 down at the Dell at half time. That sort of thing never used to happen to us, so what did we do……..blamed the grey shirts!!!!! Ha ha! Giggsy got one back so maybe it did affect us.
Later that year we were at the Dell again and although I scored one of my hundreds of goals for the club we conceded six!!! The Gaffer was not happy that day either and it wasn’t because of the kit. They actually had some tricky players like Berkovic, Ostenstad and Le Tissier. But no excuses, we weren’t good enough, so to make up for it we went on to win the Title, happy days!!!!”
David predicts a 2-0 win – with a goal for Rooney, if he plays – and wanted to pass on his good wishes to Edwin van der Sar, who announced he will retire at the end of the season.
“Oh and a quick word on Edwin announcing his retirement for the end of the season. The highest compliment I can pay him is that he managed to fill Big Pete’s boots. Good Luck mate.”
Tickets for David May’s next United Nights event, on February 11th, are on sale still through the official website. You can also find out Maysie’s predictions for selected other Cup ties this weekend on the site, too.
I live in Hampshire and always keep an eye out for how Saints are doing. They have a very good team, and play entertaining football, similar to Blackpool in fairness.
The only problem is that they seem to be a bit inconsistent as of late! If United get an early goal, a la Birmingham, then it could be a walkover. If Saints score first, it might be a bit of a fight, but we should still have too much for them in the end.
Predo – 3-0 (Rooney, Owen, Obertan)