Leicester score NINE at Southampton (and other hammerings!)
This game had to be mentioned, purely because it was when one record was broken and another was equalled.
I apologise to Southampton fans in advance, it must still be hurting 48 hours after. If it’s any consolation, you did stuff Sunderland 8-0 in the league a couple of years back.
I saw a Sunderland-supporting mate on the evening after that game as he made his way home on the train. He along with the other away fans that day were refunded their ticket costs but I don’t think that Southampton will do the same for those unlucky enough to watch on Friday.
It was seeing the result like the one at St Mary’s that make football fans sit up and take notice. They are freak results and very rarely happen and it seems that it’s never your team that wins by such a huge margin.
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| Solskjaer celebrates one of United’s eight goals against Forest |
No team had ever scored nine away from home in a Premier League game up up until this weekend.
Manchester United held the record with a 1-8 victory over Nottingham Forest from February 1999. United’s current manager Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer came off the substitutes bench that day and scored 4 goals for them that afternoon.
Manchester United ended that season winning the League, Cup and Champions League treble and Nottingham Forest unsurprisingly, were relegated.
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| Andy Cole scores against Ipswich Town, March 1995 |
Manchester United also have the all-time Premier League goalscoring record and have held it for nearly a quarter of century. They beat Ipswich Town 9-0 in March 1995 and Ipswich ended up being relegated at the end of the season. Manchester United United finished second in the league behind Blackburn Rovers.
Tottenham Hotspur won 9-1 against Wigan Athletic in November 2009 but Leicester’s win in Hampshire on Friday went one better. It was also an away game which made the result all the more incredible.
Such comprehensive victories are so rare that when they do happen, people often double-take just to make sure that they red the score correctly.
If a high score came in on the Vidiprinter on BBC Grandstand then they would put the score in word form as well as the number, for example Arsenal 7 (SEVEN) Tottenham Hotspur 0.
Yugoslavia hit 9 goals past World Cup debutants Zaire in the 1974 World Cup. The organisers clearly weren’t expecting such a huge score as they ran out of space on their scoreboard!
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| The scoreboard at the 1974 World Cup tie between Yugoslavia and Zaire |
The terms used by journalists to describe these results always seem so harsh on the team who have just lost.
Phrases such as battering, hammering and thrashed compound the misery for the fans and players who have just suffered for 90 minutes.
If your rival team loses by such a large margin then most of us can’t help but gloat. You’ve got to do it with a fair amount of trepidation as the next week it could be your lot getting a battering from someone else!
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