(Yesterday’s edition, covering before 1992, can be found here).

Arsenal’s first fixture against Southampton during the Premiership era came at the Dell at the start of December 1992. The seventeen match unbeaten run at the end of the season before made Arsenal the bookies favourites to take the inaugural Premiership title. After taking the top spot of the Premiership at the start of November, the Gunners would go on a run of four straight defeats – the third of which being a 0-2 loss at the Dell secured by goals from Neil Maddison and Iain Dowie. Another defeat to Tottenham a week later made it four in a row. Arsenal’s win-less streak would eventually stretch to nine on the bounce until a win over Man City at Maine Road in January, by which point the Gunners were languishing in seventh place and seven points off of league leaders Norwich City.

At home, this win-less league run would continue much longer, until the visit of Southampton to Highbury in late March. After seven home games without victory, the Gunners would finally secure three points with a 4-3 victory, with goals from Andy Linighan, Paul Merson and two for Jimmy Carter. Six months later Southampton returned to Highbury, on this occasion a Paul Merson goal was enough to give Arsenal three points with a 1-0 win. Arsenal’s visit to the Dell in 1993/94 came in mid-March, where goals for Kevin Campbell and an Ian Wright hat-trick gave Arsenal a 4-0 win.

For the eighth time in nine seasons, Southampton would finish in the bottom half of the table. Southampton would avoid the drop by just one point for the second season in a row. Their star man Matthew Le-Tissier however would win praise in many quarters, not least BBC2’s brand new football related comedy show ‘Fantasy Football League’. Here is Le-Tiss appearing on the show to perform a sketch with Baddiel and Skinner. Le-Tiss’s wonder goals such as this one against Newcastle left many wondering why he didn’t feature within Terry Venables’s plans for the England side (which Baddiel and Skinner would again make light of in another sketch).

In 1994/95, Southampton signed Bruce Grobbelaar from Liverpool. In November however, Grobbelaar would be subject to allegations of match fixing. Bruce’s first game following the allegations would be against Arsenal at the Dell. Grobbelaar however kept a clean sheet that day as a Jim Magilton goal inflicted a 0-1 defeat on Arsenal. The Saints visit to Highbury that year saw the two sides play out a 1-1 draw, with another goal for Jim Magilton against Arsenal cancelling out an earlier strike from John Hartson, scoring his second goal in just three appearances for the Gunners.

By the start of the 1995/96 season John Hartson would face stiff competition for his place in the shape of the arrival of Dennis Bergkamp from Inter Milan. However, it took Bergkamp seven games to get off the mark when Southampton arrived at Highbury in late September 1995. The Dutch Master gave Arsenal the lead on seventeen minutes, with Tony Adams putting the Gunners two up on twenty three minutes. By half time though, the Saints had pegged Arsenal back to 2-2, until a cracking second goal from Bergkamp put Arsenal back in the lead again and an Ian Wright goal seventeen minutes from time meant a 4-2 win for the Gunners. Arsenal’s trip to the Dell that season came in December, however the match ended in a 0-0 draw.

When Double chasing Manchester United headed to the Dell in early April on the back of four straight wins, the Saints were hovering just one point above the relegation zone. Incredibly, the Saints went in 3-0 up at half time, which Alex Ferguson had blamed on United’s grey away shirt in which they had failed to win a game, leading to Fergie’s decision to change United’s shirts at half time as they ‘were unable to spot each other on the pitch’ (if grey things truly were invisible, would this not render products such as Just for Men and Grecian 2000 obsolete?). A last minute Ryan Giggs goal failed to spare United’s blushes as the Saints won 3-1. The win would be significant as Southampton avoided relegation on goal difference in 1995/96. This achievement however would pale into comparison with Man United’s next visit to the Dell.

On the back of Man. United’s 0-5 hammering to Newcastle the previous week, the Saints inflicted further misery in the shape of a 6-3 loss with goals from Matthew Le-Tisser, two for Eyal Berkovic, two for Egil Ostenstad and an own goal from Gary Neville. From the sublime to the ridiculous, one month on Saints manager Graeme Souness was hoaxed into signing a Senegalese thirty one year old on the basis of a prank call from someone pretending to be George Weah. Ali Dia played one game for Southampton in the Premiership against Leeds United before being found out. In December the Saints visited Highbury. Arsene Wenger’s first game against Southampton ended in a 3-1 win with Paul Merson, Ian Wright and Paul Shaw on target for the Gunners, Eyal Berkovic on target for Southampton. Wenger’s first visit to the Dell also ended in victory, with goals from Stephen Hughes and Paul Shaw giving Arsenal a 2-0 victory.

Arsenal visited the Dell again early on in Wenger’s first double year, as goals for Marc Overmars and two from Dennis Bergkamp gave the Gunners a 3-1 win. The following January back at Highbury, Arsenal ran out 3-0 winners with goals from Dennis Bergkamp, Tony Adams and Nicolas Anelka. In 1998/99, both League fixtures with Southampton would end in draws, 1-1 at Highbury in October with Anelka again on the scoresheet and former Spurs midfielder David Howells scoring for the Saints, while back at the Dell in early April the two sides played out a 0-0 draw.

The last meeting between the two sides during the twentieth century took place at the Dell in September 1999, with a 1-0 win for Arsenal secured by Thierry Henry’s first ever goal in an Arsenal shirt. The first meeting between the two sides this millennium came in late February 2000 at Highbury, which Arsenal won 3-1 with goals for Dennis Bergkamp and two for Freddie Ljungberg, with the late Dean Richards on target for the Saints. The following December, a Claus Lundekvam own goal with five minutes left gave Arsenal a 1-0 win at Highbury. At the very end of the 2000/01 season Arsenal would visit Southampton for the very last competitive fixture to be played at the Dell.

This fixture took place one week after the calamitous 2001 FA Cup Final where Arsenal conceded two late Michael Owen goals. European qualification had also already been secured before kick-off, meaning that the Gunners couldn’t fall below second in the table (runners up for the third year in a row). Ashley Cole – who’d just emerged ahead of Silvinho as Arsenal’s first choice left back – opened the scoring for the Gunners, before Hassan Kachloul pulled it back to 1-1. Arsenal took the lead again nine minutes into the second half with a goal from Freddie Ljungberg before Kachloul equalised again. In the last minute however a Matt Le-Tissier volley gave them a 3-2 win to bring the curtain down at the Dell in style.

That final fixture at the Dell saw an attendance of 15,252. The following season the Saints moved to the Friends Provident St. Mary’s Stadium, managing successfully to marry the financial necessities of Stadium sponsorship, but with a permanent suffix of relevance to the club’s history (are you listening Arsenal board?). The club also married the past with the future, as the St. Mary’s Stadium was but a stone’s throw away from St Mary’s Church itself where the founding fathers formed the club 116 years prior, making it a spiritual homecoming of sorts. Arsenal’s first visit to the St. Mary’s Stadium took place in October 2001, with an attendance of 29,759 - almost double that which the Dell could hold for the Arsenal match just five months prior.

Arsenal won the first meeting at St. Mary’s 2-0 with goals from Robert Pires and Thierry Henry. Southampton’s visit to Highbury came at the start of February 2002. The Gunners had been unbeaten for the last seven games, their last defeat being a week before Christmas against Newcastle, who inflicted a 1-3 defeat at Highbury. Arsenal dropped two points against the Saints, taking a first half lead with a Sylvain Wiltord goal, however Jo Tessem equalised for Southampton eleven minutes from time, the result ending in a 1-1 draw. It would however be the last points dropped by the Gunners that season, as thirteen straight victories gave Arsenal a League title, to go with the FA Cup – the club’s third double secured on May 8th, thirty one years to the day from the first in 1971.

St. Mary’s Stadium would host its first international game the following October, which would be an England Euro 2004 qualifier against Macedonia that would be noteworthy for Arsenal’s under fire keeper David Seaman. Hot on the heels of his error against Brazil in the World Cup the previous summer, old safe hands conceded a freak goal direct from a corner. The game ended in a 2-2 draw, but would be Seaman’s final international appearance for the national side. Back to domestic football, and Arsenal’s unbeaten run lasted until late October with back to back defeats with Everton and Blackburn, however going into the fixture away at Southampton Arsenal managed three league wins in a row over Fulham, Newcastle and Tottenham.

At St. Mary’s, Arsenal took the lead through a Dennis Bergkamp strike, though James Beattie equalised and then put the Saints into the lead from the penalty spot. A Kolo Toure own goal extended the Saints lead and though Robert Pires pulled one back ten minutes from time, Southampton inflicted a 2-3 defeat on the Gunners. By the time of the return fixture, the League title had been conceded to Man United three days prior with a 2-3 defeat to Leeds United at Highbury. With hindsight, this game would be noteworthy as the first game of Arsenal’s forty nine match unbeaten run. The Gunners thrashed Southampton 6-1, with a hat-trick each for Jermaine Pennant and Robert Pires (the latter’s sealed with an exquisite chip).

This result no doubt made Arsenal the overwhelming favourites to win the FA Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff ten days later. The Cup Final performance was nowhere near as blistering as the League fixture, though Robert Pires would again make the difference seven minutes before half time, as Arsenal retained the FA Cup with a 1-0 win. Other noteworthy facts about this final are that Southampton’s Chris Baird would feature in this final, despite only making his League debut a week earlier in the final league fixture of the season against Man City. Heavy rainfall in the Cardiff area meant that the Millennium Stadium’s retractable roof would be closed, effectively making this the first and so far only FA Cup Final to be played ‘indoors’. This fixture would also be David Seaman’s last game for Arsenal, having transferred to Man City over the summer.

The following season would of course be Arsenal’s invincible season. Arsenal visited St. Mary’s in the interim between Christmas and New Year. The match would again be settled by a Robert Pires goal (his seventh in six games against the Saints), to give Arsenal a 1-0 win. The return fixture at Highbury took place in early February 2004. The previous week Arsenal had beaten their previous best start to a season by stretching their unbeaten run to twenty four games and closing in on the record jointly held by Liverpool and Leeds United of twenty nine from the start of the season. The Gunners’ run continued with a 2-0 win secured with two goals from Thierry Henry.

The unbeaten run which started with Southampton’s visit way back in May 2003, which stretched to forty nine games until Arsenal finally lost to Man United at Old Trafford in October 2004. One week later Southampton visited Highbury for what, unbeknown to the Saints at the time, would be their last ever visit. Arsenal took the lead through a Thierry Henry strike, but two headed goals from Rory Delap would give Southampton the lead. Arsenal however would salvage a point with an excellent last minute goal from Robin Van Persie in his first season at Highbury, the match ending in a 2-2 draw. This match was also noteworthy for an appearance in the stands from Demi Moore sporting a ‘John Kerry for President’ badge, who was standing against George W. Bush in the US election as Americans went to the ballot box three days later and to the world’s dismay re-elected ‘Dubya’ (and in the words of the Daily Mirror’s classic front page on November 4th 2004: ‘How can 59, 054, 087 people be so dumb?’).

By the time of the return fixture at St. Mary’s, the Saints had appointed former Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp as manager to help fight their battle against the drop out of the Premiership. Just ahead of half-time, after the Saints were reduced to ten men as a result of David Prutton’s sending off for two bookable offences, Freddie Ljungberg gave Arsenal the lead. Six minutes into the second half however, the sides would be evened up by Robin Van Persie being given his marching orders for a late tackle on Graeme Le Saux, which allowed Southampton back into the game with Peter Crouch equalising for the Saints on sixty seven minutes. Arsenal would also be denied a late winner after Ashley Cole had a goal disallowed for offside in the closing seconds, with the match ending in a 1-1 draw.

Many commented at the time that this draw costed Arsenal the title, however the dropped points were more costly to Southampton who finished the season bottom of the table and two points adrift of safety. Southampton lost their final game of the season to Man United 1-2 which brought to an end their twenty seven year run in the top flight of English football. There would be no quick return to the top tier for Southampton, however the Saints would produce a fruitful youth policy with a sixteen year old Theo Walcott making his debut for Southampton after coming on as sub in their opening game of the 2005/06 season. Walcott would go on to score four goals for the Saints that season before transferring to Arsenal in January 2006.