Football / Fan's Eye View: Behold a bold new era: No. 31 - Southampton

PERSONALLY I blame Colin Bell. He was the first person I can recall being described as a 'midfield' player. People said he had a good 'work-rate.' Later, I found out that this meant running up and down the pitch continuously for 90 minutes.

The Southampton manager, Ian Branfoot, likes work-rate. He wanted to build a team that could crush opponents with sheer work-rate. He had no time for any of the niceties of the game. You know, skill, flair, vision, passing even. No, to him football was a simple, three- stage concept. 1: Use your work- rate to chase opponents all over the pitch and get the ball off them. 2: Immediately bang said ball upfield pronto. 3: Hope for a flick-on and someone on the end of it to score - if not a set- piece would do.

To Branfoot, football was a battle. 'It's all very well for the Liverpools and Manchester Uniteds to pass the ball,' he said, 'the rest of us just have to battle.'

Terry Hurlock's work-rate was not in question. Nor was his battle quotient. So he was acquired from Rangers. Ironically, this has proved to be one of Branfoot's less disastrous transfers. Terry at least performs according to expectations.

With the exception of the splendid Ken Monkou, the rest have been, to say the least, disappointing. Kerry Dixon and David Speedie, reunited by the visionary Branfoot, have so far failed to fulfill his pre-season prediction that their games could still improve by 20 per cent under his coaching.

Speedie, having brawled with Hurlock on a 'goodwill' tour to Jersey, is now on loan to West Bromwich because, Branfoot would have us believe, his wife was unwilling to settle in the South. Of course. Dixon has been loaned to Luton, after being kept out of the team by Iain Dowie, another Branfoot buy, who could perhaps best be described as an 'athletically challenged' player.

Meanwhile the team, pros to a man, dutifully battled on. Bookings and sendings-off piled up. There were just two small problems. One was Matthew Le Tissier. Every bit as gifted as the former heroes, Terry Paine and Mick Channon, he also shared their other respective qualities of petulance and laziness.

Not exactly a definitive battler, he was obviously not to be trusted. Trouble was, he had this irritating habit of scoring goals and making them for others - and this despite being banished to the fringes of the battle-zone. So he was tolerated.

Problem two was a little harder to body-swerve. Battling, despite lung-busting work-rate, was simply not working. The Saints were propping up the league while the likes of Norwich, Coventry and QPR, teams of comparable stature and resources, who finished last season below the Saints, were thriving on attacking football based on passing and movement, which, with supreme irony, was the hallmark of Saints' teams as far back as Ted Bates (the manager who first took Southampton into the old First Division in the 1960s).

How the deposed manager, Chris Nicholl, must have laughed. His team perfectly maintained the special tradition of Saints football: scintillating attack and bungling defence. How the fans cried. Alan Shearer had been sold. So had Rod Wallace. Attack was now a big boot and get after it, lads. Defence was a nine-man affair and still the team lost.

Eventually all this was too much for the fans, who rose up in anger. There were protests, sit-ins and plenty of abuse.

Then, in the home game against Arsenal, passes were seen to be exchanged between Saints players. Up to three at a time. After a season and a half of battling, it seemed an orgy of Brazilian- like indulgence. The fans were baffled, then euphoric. What had happened? Had Branfoot, previously so immune to criticism, caved in? Had he just become desperate? Had he said, go on then, play your football? We'll probably never know.

Crucially, given the green light, the Saints defeated their admittedly off-form opponents with good football. Since then, their metamorphosis into a team worth watching has been allowed to continue.

All teams need some luck, and the Saints have certainly capitalised on an abundant supply in a run of success that now, incredibly, has Branfoot talking about qualifying for Europe. You could argue that all this merely illustrates the mediocrity of the Premier League, but at least now there is hope at The Dell.

Andy Duncan, record producer / session musician.