Liverpool made mistakes on that day you would never expect of them, so there’s always an upset round the corner.”The other tie – Southampton against Watford – is also a Premiership versus First Division encounter. Wenger said he was not surprised by the strong showing by the Nationwide League. “I believe that the level has gone up compared to the last three or four years,” he said.Watford’s manager, Ray Lewington, said his players had no intention of being overawed. “We’re going to have a really good go, knowing the expectation is loaded on Southampton. We can play and we know we can go there with a genuine chance of winning.”There is more at stake for Watford than the other clubs in the last four – having been days away from going into administration last autumn before players and staff accepted a 12 percent deferment on pay. But having beaten two Premiership clubs already this year – West Bromwich and Sunderland – they know that a place in the final could, literally, alter their fortunes.. “It is 27 years since Southampton won the FA Cup, do you think it is time you won it again?” Gordon Strachan does not hesitate.

“No, I think we should wait another 27 years – that’ll make it even more special.” Strachan seizes on a stray question the way he cajoles his midfield to snap up a stray pass. He jumps from an anecdote about the showers suddenly packing up at the club’s training ground – “there I was with shampoo in my hair…” – to questioning the insurance value of the FA Cup before him – “10m? Aye, 10m what, rupees?” – to expounding his football philosophy. “If you get them working hard, it does not become hard work,” he says, mantra-like Hard work is his credo.”It becomes habit Hard work changes into habit. They think it is hard work to start with and then they realise that it is what they are meant to do and it becomes a habit.” But so, if he is to be believed, is having fun.

Surprisingly this latter-day Stakhanovite does not judge success by silverware.”I do not gauge my career in trophies,” he says. “I gauge it by how happy I was.” Suffice to say at the moment he is very happy – and in touching distance of Southampton’s first trophy since 1976. Expectation in the town is brimming from the “We’re on the march with Strachan’s Army” merchandising – for a Scot a wince-inducing reminder of Ally McLeod and the 1978 World Cup brouhaha – to the local newspaper producing a 24-page FA Cup fever supplement. “We are enjoying the excitement and quite rightly so,” he says prior to the Saints’ first semi-final for 17 years.So how special a game is it for Strachan? “I will not know until afterwards. If we achieve something, then I will tell you it feels fantastic, if we get beat then I will say it meant nothing.” Nevertheless, expectation on the south coast is bursting. Southampton play Watford tomorrow, Portsmouth may confirm promotion to the Premiership today, Brighton & Hove Albion can still defy the drop from the First Division – and then there is Havant & Waterlooville, in the semi-finals of the FA Trophy. The non-League side are managed by Liam Daish, the former Irish international and something of a Strachan prot?.The two were together at Coventry City where Strachan, 46, served his managerial apprenticeship.

The furthest they got in the Cup was the last eight in 1998 before Daish retired the following year. Was there anything the former defender took with him into management? “Aye, a big insurance cheque,” says Strachan before Daish can reply.When he does so it is, again, with reference to that appetite. “The one thing with Gordon when I went there was the work ethic, really, and the enjoyment of working hard and getting that across,” he says. “It took a little while to get it through but after you get a few good results they take a step back and think: ‘Yeah, that is probably the way to go now’.”Strachan says: “I always thought there was the possibility that he could go into management – because he had to think his way about the park. He was not the quickest man in the world so he had to think his way.”I was not the strongest or the quickest so I had to think my way too and if you start thinking early in your career how to get rid of obstacles it helps you think later on. Some people are lucky in that they are naturally athletic and naturally brilliant but for the rest of us you do start thinking.” Not that Strachan’s memory serves him well when it comes to the FA Cup. What does he remember from his only win, in 1985, with Manchester United?”I’ve never seen the game.