When Newcastle visited earlier in the season, then Toon Army manager Alan Pardew was ridiculed with chants of "your getting sacked in the morning" this time we should be more respectful
Some Saints supporters have short memories, whenever Alan Pardew returns to St Mary's he should be warmly applauded for the work he did in building the foundations of the club in the Liebher era, not ridiculed.
Perhaps many of the supporters who poured scorn in his direction and taunted him that he was getting the sack were not going to St Mary's back in 2009, but if they were keeping a close eye on the club then they will know the work that Pardew did for Saints.
Don't forget that when Markus Liebherr took ownership in July of 2009 he and his finacial advisor Nicola Cortese had no idea how to build a football team and had never heard of players like Rickie Lambert.
What they had though was a team working for them in England who were drawing up plans before any Saints fan had heard of Liebherr, before the contracts were even agreed Alan Pardew was identifying players and looking at what he would need to do to build a much depleted Saints squad made up mainly of kids.
The moment Liebherr took over Pardew could be appointed and get to work and get to work he did, he had done his homework on who the best players at this level would be, back then we had no player aquisition department, the likes of Rickie Lambert, Dan Harding, Dean Hammond & Rahdi Jaidi, were signed very quickly and lets be blunt they were not household names in Switzerland.
They were soon followed by Jose Fonte, Jason Puncheon, Frazer Richardson, & Lee Barnard etc, all of these players had been identified by Pardew and it is testimony that he signed 4 of those players for League One who would go on to play in the Premier for the club.
So when Alan Pardew takes his seat on the bench on Saturday he should be warmly welcomed as without him there would have been no Rickie Lambert fairytale and Jose Fonte would not be captain of this club now, Pardew played his part in our rise back to the top and indeed one of the most important parts in that he built the foundations and he built them well.
Sadly he was treated badly by Nicola Cortese and he did not deserve that, nor did his successor Nigel Adkins for that matter but that is another story.
So I for one will applaud Alan Pardew, his contribution should never be forgotten