Home And Away | Southampton aim to add more drama to a strange week in League Cup final
The Saints are looking for their first trophy in more than four decades, and again the opponents are Manchester United
After Claudio Ranieri’s sackings, Pie Gate, Rooney’s agents banqueting with big-bucks China and Europa flops Spurs reverting to type in Gent, all we need to top off this kooky week is for Southampton to thrash Manchester United in Sunday’s Wembley League Cup showdown and Old Trafford to then fire Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho for the chop might seem far-fetched, but equally epic dreams are screening in the minds of slumbering Southampton supporters.
Sunday’s final is a re-run of the famous cup showdown of 1976, when in the FA Cup minnows Southampton, then enduring mid-table mediocrity in the old Second Division, beat First Division Manchester United, then managed by Scottish legend Tommy Docherty.
Saints striker Bobby Stokes shocked the football world with an 83rd-minute strike that beat full-stretched United keeper Alex Stepney.
Time stopped in the city of Southampton and its satellite towns and villages. The Hampshire air erupted with car horns and cheers from tens of thousands of living rooms that for the best part of that David v Goliath afternoon had been silent and breathless. TV screens around the world beamed pictures of those lucky enough to get a ticket dancing in delirium on the terraces of that famous twin-towered old stadium – one half of the 99,115 crowd on a natural, legal high only football can offer.
