Nick Holmes recalls the last time Southampton played in a League Cup final, in 1979, they took a 1-0 half-time lead against an apparently hungover Nottingham Forest team.
‘I’ve talked about it a few times with a couple of their players and they insist Brian Clough made them drink too much on the Friday,’ says Holmes with a laugh, a Saints player that day and still revered by fans as a one-club man who spent 14 years at the Dell.
‘Clough thought it was good for bonding, so the Forest lads had their champagne or whatever they wanted the night before.