For fans of a certain age, this fixture will forever call to mind an afternoon fully 18 years ago now, when Manchester United travelled to Southampton in a grey shirt and didn’t like it. They lost 3-1, but then won their last four games of the season (they’d won 15 of the 16 before it too, in all competitions) to take the title anyway and the FA Cup final to boot (when Liverpool’s kit, or at least their pre-match Armani suits, became even more infamous). A few years ago I asked Lee Sharpe, who was in the team that day, about it. And this is what he said:  It was a roasting hot day at The Dell. We didn’t have a great record there anyway, but this game went really badly - we were a goal down pretty quickly, and three behind by half-time. Obviously something had to change.  I’m not sure if any of the players mentioned the kit. Personally I felt that we were playing really poorly, and that we couldn’t really blame anything or anyone but ourselves. Having said that, it was a bit tricky to see players. It was all right if you had a bit of time to look up and see what was happening, but you didn’t see much if you only had time to glance. I think the weather had something to do with it too - the fact that it was so bright made our dull grey harder to make out.  Anyway, I don’t think anyone had time to complain. The manager just stormed in and said: “Get that kit off, you’re getting changed.” Those were the first words he said at half-time. I don’t think he liked the shirt anyway – our results had been poor whenever we wore it, and we certainly never played in it again.  It seems a bit strange that we were ready with a totally different kit to change into, but maybe it’s because someone thought that the grey kit might be confused with Southampton’s - although given that they wear red and white stripes it doesn’t seem very likely. We wore blue and white in the second half, and played a bit better. I’d probably put it down to a mixture of the new kit and the manager’s hairdryer treatment at half-time. We didn’t let any more in and Ryan Giggs scored towards the end.  The shirt is probably a collector’s item now, for all the wrong reasons. I think my dad’s got mine. He’s got all my old shirts. I feel sorry for anyone who’d bought the replica, because it was out of date pretty quickly. There was lots of hype about the kit change for a while after the game, because United were always bringing out new kits, but I think it passed us by. I know it was blamed for the defeat but I think we took responsibility for it as a team.  Given a choice, I’d say our all-black away kit was my favourite, followed by the all-white one we played in for the Cup-Winners’ Cup final in 1991. Simplicity is important for me, I suppose.  And here’s (probably, off the top of my head) my favourite song with the word “grey” in the title:  And here’s (probably, off the top of my head) my favourite song performed by someone called “Grey”:  Enjoy! I’ll be back with some team news shortly.
Minute-by-minute report: Southampton played badly, Manchester United played worse, but the visitors won anyway, and are up to third in the Premier League