CHRISTMAS week is always special, whether you’re talking about football or anything else.

Of course, times have changed both on and off the field. But if you look at the league table for Saints, with just over a third of the season gone now, it’s not too disappointing.

Seventh place and, as I’ve always said, the league is basically seven-seven-six, now that Everton have improved. It used to be six-eight-six with the top group being the obvious ones - the two Manchesters, Liverpool and three big London clubs.

But if you’re looking at it now, where is one of the biggest clubs, not just in London but in the whole world? Oops, there they are – in the bottom six, Arsenal, 10 points behind Southampton.

Whilst there is a large group only within three or four points of each other, Arsenal are not even in that lot, they are only four points above third bottom.

They are always a club I’ve admired with people like the Hill-Wood family, who were always what we called the owners and Mr Ken Friar, who along with Peter Robinson at Liverpool were the two most experienced and popular secretaries. They were eventually given other titles and both directors. Ken stepped down from the board earlier this year and is now a life president at the club. But I can never, ever remember Arsenal being this low.

The majority of clubs these days will have certainly had the manager Mikel Arteta out, but I’m sure Arsenal, being the way they’ve always been, will give him more time and help than most. But from a football point of view, he really has to get the players sorted out to get more effort on the field than they obviously have.

One column I noticed this week said that if they went down, which up until recently has been unheard of, the players’ salaries would go down by 25 per cent. Having said that, they would still be on an awful lot more than most. Their agents I’m sure will already have been looking around for their next move.

That, of course, is one of the big differences. Where players in the past would be happy to stay at clubs for most of their career, modern day players seem to be pleased enough to move around every two to three years.

Talking of managers, one who may not be as safe is Steve Bruce, who I’ve always respected, both as a player at Man Utd and both on and off the field as a decent bloke. From my knowledge in the North East, he has been under an amazing amount of pressure because the supporters there can never believe with the size of the ground they’re not in with the top six or seven.

Of course when things aren’t going right it’s the manager that gets the blame. But this week Steve put his hands straight up as they lost a cup tie, admittedly away, to a much smaller club who are happy just to be in the Championship, Brentford. They beat them in the League Cup to get into the semi-finals of any major cup competition for the first time in their history.

I don’t suppose the trip back to Newcastle would have been very enjoyable and Steve has already taken all the blame for the result.

But Christmas is really not a time for negatives so I hope all managers are given more time to at least get into the new year, hoping that the rest of their season, like we all do in 2021, is better than what you were doing in 2020.

Christmas memories

My memories of fixtures at Christmas were, being a family man myself, knowing how important it was to see the children when they got up on Christmas morning.

What I eventually did was, knowing that we all had a game on Boxing Day and we’d have to train on Christmas Day, I changed the times from morning to evening. So all players, whether they had children or not, could spend most of the day with their families and then keep the numbers down to the bare minimum of 12 with the trainer and myself coming in at about seven o’clock in the evening, doing a bit of light training in the evening and then into a local hotel for the game the next day.

That of course was for home games but a bit more difficult if it was an away fixture.

But you may have noticed the league or the FA are trying to do a good job over the holidays by making fixtures not too far apart.

For instance, this week we are playing Fulham away and West Ham at home – two London clubs. Which of course, if supporters could travel, would have been better than having to get up to the likes of Newcastle.

The only fear of course was that players, whilst they could stay with their families, I used to warn them to keep off the Christmas pudding and eat with common sense whilst the rest of the family and children tucked in.

But whatever the systems are now, I wish everyone both in the game and particularly at St Mary’s, manager Ralph, the players on the pitch, everyone at the club and those on the terraces, the very best Christmas and hope that things get back to normal as quickly as possible next year.