The past week in football has served up many battles on personal, club and trophy-contending levels: we’ve had Barcelona take on Real Madrid at the Bernabeu in El Clasico, and thus Messi versus Ronaldo in a personal Ballon d’Or rivalry and Guardiola pitted against Mourinho in a battle of wit and bravery, the oil-rich play toys of Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan went head to head in Black Monday and lastly, on a cold South coast afternoon, we had the Red versus the Blue of Hampshire. Apparently, even as news to me as a Saints fan, it was now referred to as El Clasicoast.
Since the final whistle sounded at St. Mary’s last week, having drawn at home, a rarity in the past twelve months, to Blackpool, all attention turned to their first league fixture against their most fierce rivals, Portsmouth Football Club, since 2005. Southampton boss Nigel Adkins, said, during last week, in the build up to the South coast derby, “they’ve got a good home record but not as good as (Southampton’s)” and he was right to say so: the draw to Blackpool ended The Saints’ run of 21 successive home victories in all competitions.
Their last loss on home soil was the 2-1 FA Cup defeat to Manchester United and the draw at Blackpool saw, despite not winning, Southampton stretch their unbeaten run at home to 12 months. Southampton were away to Portsmouth though and that didn’t make for as pleasing reading: Southampton had lost their last two away games to Doncaster Rovers and Bristol City, and Portsmouth headed into El Clasicoast with 13 points from 15 at home and were unbeaten at Fratton Park since their 3-2 loss to Darren Ferguson’s Peterborough back in September.
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The enormity of this fixture was expressed through manager, player, fan and even the police: the FA Cup tie in February 2010 in which the then Premier League Portsmouth triumphed 4-1, saw bricks, bottles and chairs chucked by fans outside St Mary’s stadium in violent scenes, with 12 arrests and sentences and therefore, this time round, with Saints making the trip away, the police chose to enforce “The Bubble.”
The Bubble tactic, as a Hampshire police spokesman described, was about, “balancing the enjoyment of football fans and the rights of others not to be subjected to violence,” and was the first deployment of the strategy in Hampshire. Southampton fans were forced to purchase their tickets with compulsory club travel if they wished to attend El Clasicoast and the 60-strong coach convoy was police escorted into the city to avoid contact between the fierce rivals.
Although the measures did threaten to subdue the day for some, in particular self-anointed but not respected nor representative independent and idiotic fan groups and their spokesman’s inability to go to a football game on a bus without drinking, when that whistle was blown to start the first South coast derby of the 2011/12 season, all that mattered was the football. All that really mattered in the build-up was the football.
Despite Michael Appleton quickly assuring fans that he, “(knew) the importance of the result,” talking promisingly of Portsmouth, “not going to beat Southampton just by rolling sleeves up and being blood and thunder,” stating that, “you have to be a bit cuter than that,” once the game got underway it seemed that Portsmouth were happy to play a scrappy game and play for the draw. In the end it was what they got, but to get it they had to change: Southampton took the lead through a goal that was almost a carbon copy of the last one Saints scored against a Portsmouth side. Where it was Dan Harding whipping in a left-footed ball from near the halfway line for Rickie Lambert to rise highest and head home last time, it was Danny Fox to this time provide the same ball to the same man with the same result.