After a great start to the season it made me wonder how long it has taken us to amass the same points that we have today in previous seasons, the result was surprising.
As we look at the Premier league table and our proud position of 3rd after only 8 games played with a total of 16 points it made me wonder just how long it took us to get that number of points in some of our dark days in seasons past in the Premier league, the findings where surprising.
In the 22 seasons that the Premier League has been in existence prior to this one, Saints have played in 15 of them, of those seasons as i have sat down on Christmas Day for lunch we have had 16 points or less on an astounding six occasions.
Now a fair few of those seasons were back in the 1990's when it cant be argued we had a fair few relegation battles but a couple of them are a little nearer than we would care to remember.
The opening seasons of the Premier saw a 42 game format so we played back then a few more games in the early half of the season than we do now, this season our last game before Xmas will be our 17th of the season, back in 93/94 though our trip to Swindon was our 21st game of the season and after losing to Swindon Town away a few days earlier, Saints fans had to eat their Turkey with only 14 points on the board, just about our worst total on a points per game ratio of all of these dire seasons.
95/96 was slightly better as we had 18 points amassed before Xmas Day, and in 96/97 we had 16 from 18 games exactly the same number that we have now, but 98/99 saw our worst ever start to a Premier season as Dave Jones began his second season as Saints manager, Jones was not on many people's Xmas card list having only 13 points as we opened the presents in a season that would become known as the Great escape.
The next season 99/00 was not much better as Jones weighed down by a pending court case stubbornly refused to accept that his off the field problems were affecting his job at the Dell and we had 17 points, however we were on a downward spiral having won only one league game since August after a bright start.
Season 01/02 was our first at St Mary's and we had endured a torrid start resulting in the arrival of Wee Gordon Strachan, however he was still finding his feet meaning that on Xmas Day we still only had 16 points on the board.
2004/05 was a black season for the club, it was a black December as well with Harry Redknapp arriving as manager, he could not be blamed too much though for the fact that we had only 13 points on the board after 18 games, no what he can be blamed for is the fact that he only got 19 from the next 20 games.
We then obviously had a gap before our next Premier season,although Redknapp's was much shorter before he skulked off back down the M27, our return to the top flight in 2012/13 saw us with only 15 points on the board, however unlike 99/00 our trajectory was upwards given that after 11 games we had only 5 points to our name, November had seen an upturn and as poor as the points total was it did at least keep us out of the bottom 4, unlike Redknapp who had taken over at QPR and only had 10 points on the board.
So this perhaps puts into perspective what a great start Saints have had to the season, in the past there have been far too many where we have started badly and taken a long time to recover, perhaps the most amazing fact from this is that of all those seasons mentioned we only got relegated in one of them, perhaps showing that the Spirit Of Southampton has always been there.
After such a great weekend though Im not going to end this article on a downer, we now need to look to emulate our best ever position on Christmas Day, there would be some that would think that was last years 24 points, but they would be wrong, our best start was was exactly 10 years ago, when a great December saw us not only beat Liverpool at Anfield, but on the 21st slaughter Pompey 3-0 at St Mary's, we had 26 points and sat in fourth position whilst Pompey sat in the relegation zone with ironically the same 16 point total that we have today, now that's what I call a Christmas Present.