Southampton FC are a club that is no stranger to the odd heavy defeat or two over the last 50 years or so, but surely the Red Devils defeat to Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday was a bigger thrashing than either of our recent two debacles given the size of Manchester United, will Saints get the backlash.
When Saints went down 9-0 at Old Trafford a couple of years ago there were extenuating circumstances, an injury crisis that saw two youngsters in the starting line up and a bench made up of two goalkeepers, one senior player and 6 youngsters.
If that wasn't bad enough we were down to 10 men after only a minute after Alexandre Jankewitz was sent off, if that wasn't bad enough in the 86th minute with the score only at a mere 6-0 we had Jan Bednarek sent off by Mike Dean and with even the man he fouled telling the ref he hadn't been touched and the VAR people saying that Dean had to review his red card, the hapless referee became just about the only ref in history not to go with the review and change his decision, meaning that we went 7-0 down from the resulting penalty and with only 9 men conceded 2 more.
But Manchester united had no extenuating circumstances at Anfield, in fact they were on a high, 7 days earlier they had beaten Newcastle to win their first trophy in 6 years when they beat Saints 3-2 at Wembley also in the league Cup final, followed that up by despatching West ham in the FA Cup to reach the last 8 and in the week leading up to the game it was being hailed from all quarters that United were back to winning ways and that the last few years of Liverpool of Liverpool domination in this rivalry were about to end.
At Anfield they would confirm this by a fine win !
But the reality was quite different, instead of ending Liverpool's era they plunged to their joint biggest defeat in their history and at the home of perhaps their biggest rivals of the past 50 years.
Unlike Saints who after their defeat at Old Trafford had to bite their lips and go to the next League game at Newcastle with another bench packed full of youngsters, United have the luxury of a full squad to pick from and the luxury of playing in front of a crowd baying for a reaction against the 2nd bottom team in the Premier League.
It is not looking good for Saints and at this stage it is worrying to think which way the game will go next Sunday.
However their is one chink of light and that is Saints will not be the first opponents that United will play after the Anfield debacle, that honour falls to Real Betis on Thursday evening, where they host Real Betis in the Europa League in the first leg of the latest round which will see them compete for a place in the Quarter Finals.
So the hope for Saints is they get the backlash from the Liverpool game out of their systems against the Spanish side.
Indeed Saints take on United sandwiched between the two legs and will hope that the United focus will be on the Europa League where should they win it they will get into the Champions league next season, although in fairness Unites should qualify through the Premier League, although the Anfield rout perhaps ended any lingering hopes they had of a storming end of the season and overtaking Arsenal & Manchester City.
So although this is not a great time for Saints to travel to Old Trafford, it is not the end of the world, in truth this season we have been better on the road and as shown at Chelsea, sitting back and going on the break is perhaps our best tactics, we can stifle the opposition and then use the pace of the likes of Kamaleen Sulemana & Charly Alcatraz to catch them on the break.
The worry of a backlash will still be in the back of Southampton supporters minds, but we can go up there with a little more confidence than we would have done only 3 weeks ago, there is no expectation to get anything up there, all we initially want is to not be embarrassed, however you never know, backlash's often take more time to materialise than a team would like.