Our first game against Lincoln City in the League since 1961 when we met them in the old Division 2, the same level as we clash with them again in the Championship, I suspect that there won't be many present at this game who saw the last League outings.
Our last League meeting came in March 1961 at Sincil Bank and Saints supporters will be hoping for a repeat of the 3-0 victory for the visitors on that day.
Indeed this will be only the 11th League clash between the two clubs with Southampton winning 6, Lincoln 2 and the other 2 draws.
In fact we have played them almost as many times in the Cups in the same period, 7 games to be exact and we are unbeaten in all of them, winning 4 and drawing 3.
The last game we faced them was not too long ago though, back in December 2022 when Lincoln arrived in the League cup for the first home game of Nathan Jones reign when 17,385 turned out to see a scrappy 2-1 win.
We went 1-0 down in only the 2nd minute to a Gavin Bazunu own goal and equalised through Che Charles in the 25th minute, before the same player scored the winner in the 74th minute.
It shows the turmoil at St Mary's since that time in that out of the 20 players on duty that day, only 2 are at the club now, one of those, James Ward-Prowse has only just returned after 3 years away and the other is Sam Edozie who put in a transfer request this week and may yet move in the coming days.
However it should also be noted that 3 of that 20 only left this summer.
So it will be a much changed team against the Imps this weekend, but the one man who played in the last game has to be in the starting line up for this one.
After two outings off the bench James Ward-Prowse has shown that he is head and shoulders above others in the centre of midfield and that he is pure quality at this level.
So I don't expect too many shocks in the starting line up, at least not in the rear half of the team.
Danile Peretz will keep his place despite a dodgy time at Birmingham and I expect the defence to be unchanged, James Bree, Nathan Wood, Keven Schlotterbeck & Ryan Manning all in the side.
The central midfield two as I have said should be Flynn Downes & JWP, harsh on Cameron Bragg, but the truth is these are the two best options we have so we should play them.
Caspar Jander is mysteriously missing at the moment, a month ago he was on the verge of playing, Tonda Eckert regularly saying that he was almost fit and might be on the bench etc, but if not maybe the next game.
That never happened and for the past couple of weeks it has been radio silence about Jander, suggesting something more than an injury is going on.
In front of the holding paid Finn Azaz has started where he left off last season, there isn't much that goes on that doesn't involve the Irish International and when he is firing on all cylinders the team usually does as well.
But in the remaining positions there is room for change, Leo Scienza is 99.9% certain to play, despite a poor game at St Andrews on Tuesday night he is another who can change a game out of nowhere.
But I can see a change or two on the right and up front, on the other wing Tom Fellows had a decent game at Birmingham, but I think Kuryu Matsuki will come back in for this one.
Up front Cyle Larin could not be faulted in the opening trio of fixtures scoring in all of them, but at Birmingham he didn't look sharp, last season Tonda Eckert's rotation policy worked well and I think it could see a revival in this game and Divin Mubama might get the nod in this one.
Lincoln started the season poorly, they were unlucky at Middlesbrough to lose to a last minute winner on the opening weekend, beaten comprehensively at home by Pompey 3-1 and then won at Bolton Wanderers 1-0 followed by a 0-0 draw at home to Blackburn.
They will perhaps be happy with 4 points from the opening 4 games, the Pompey game aside be happy with their defending, but worried about their ability to score goals.
A look at the stats in those games show that they spend most of the games without the ball, their highest possession stat is 40% in Tuesday's scoreless draw with Blackburn, they have only had 9 shots on target out of an overall total of 32 attempts in those 4 games, they do not seem to be an attacking side.
It is going to be down to us to break them down and that will need our creative players to be at their best. As I have said if Finn Azaz plays well, so do we as a team.
These are the games we have to win if we are to be serious promotion contenders, without the points deduction we would 4th place, so there is no reason to think we wouldn't be, but we have to keep on grinding out results and moving up the table until the 4 points deduction is no longer an issue.
September is an uncertain month, the Sword of Damocles is hanging over both Tonda Eckert & the club itself, it always seems there is something going on in the background that rears it's ugly head just as we are on the verge of success, this is one of those time and we just have to get on with things.
Last season we stormed up the table from a position in January where a play off spot looked almost impossible, dealing with adversity is just what we seem to do at Southampton FC