The Hammers rolled into St Mary's for the opening day and The Ugly Inside Fanzine issue 2 hit the streets for its first ever full season costing a massive 50p, now i know why Im not a millionaire.

If Saints fans though that with the departure of Lawrie McMenemy gone that the days of big name signings were gone, they were wrong, in came Russell Osman at £325,000 and hot shot striker Paul Rideout from Bari, to make way for them Kevin Bond had gont back to his first club Bournemouth and Andy Townsend who had rankled Saints supporters with his delusions of grandeur left for the trendy enviroments of the Kings Road, sorry Carrow Road and Norwiich City who had finished two places below the Saints the previous year.

West Ham were not one of the fancies sides for the season and perhaps this encouraged Chris Nicholl to be bold in his tactics, with his combination of youth, experience and big new signings he went for a 4-2-4 formation, with Colin Clarke and Paul Rideout through the centre up front, supported by a Wallace brother on each wing, Danny & Rod expected to get up fast when we were attacking, but get back just as fast to support the midfield central pairing of Glenn Cockerill and Jimmy Case.

18,407 turned out to see it including around 3,000 Hammers in the Archers Road terracing, but they were not to be Appy Hammers, at least not for very long as on 36 minutes Paul Rideout marked his debut with a header completely unmarked to put Saints one up and within a minute Saints had won the ball back from West Ham's kick off and Glenn Cockerill chipped McAllister in the visitors goal to double the advantage.

On the hour it was three when Rideout scored again and the Hammers were in disarray with their support already spelling out their disatifaction of their manager and team not to mention board in a somewhat direct fashion with the season barely underway, in truth they were right to moan, Saints could easily have doubled their score, in the end it was only increased by one, a sublime goal from substitute Matt Le Tissier who scored a trademark goal by dribbling past about four players and firing home, to his eternal embarrsment as he admitted in an Ugly Inside exclusive interview, he celebrated the goal in rather spectacular fashion with a sort of dropping to one knee and clenched fist effect, something that his teamates did not let him forget, luckily for him this was perhaps his last spectacular goal celebration, luckily for Saints fans it was far from being his last spectacular goal for the club.

It would be a great start for Saints winning their first three games and topping the first table of the season, sadly in the fourth it would fall apart as Glenn Cockerill would have his jaw broken by a sly punch as Arsenal by Paul Davis and in the excessive injury time that followed Arsenal equalised, sadly this would be the best part of the season over, after that trio of wins we would only win seven more out of the remaining 35 games although a lot of draws meant that we in the main stayed out of relegation trouble, at least after a late flourish, West Ham meanwhile went down second from bottom.    

Photo: Action Images

thingummy added 13:54 - Jul 27 that bloody arsenal equalizer in the 9th minute of extra time knocked the stuffing out of us. It was literally a case of "we'll blow for full time when you score boys" We scorched Arsenal in the 1st half .... I think that was the season when Ruddock scored a pen when we hadnt won for over 20 matches
0

Zambucco added 13:23 - Jul 29 No wonder it was easy, as Saints were at the Dell, and the Hammers were at a non existent St. Mary's! Sorry Nick I couldn't resist it
0

Blogs 31 bloggers

Colchester United Polls