A brief guide to Man Utd v Southampton: the fixture that shaped the Premier League

When United lost to Saints in 1986, Ron Atkinson was fired and a certain Alex Ferguson took over. It’s a fixture that has made a repeated impression on the Premier League

With the Guardian’s unstoppable rise to global dominance (NOTE: actual dominance may not be global. Or dominant) we at Guardian US thought we’d run a series of articles for newer football fans wishing to improve their knowledge of the game’s history and storylines, hopefully in a way that doesn’t patronise you to within an inch of your life. A warning: If you’re the kind of person that finds the Blizzard too populist this may not be the series for you.

Manchester United enjoy fierce local rivalries with Manchester City and Liverpool (and to a lesser extent an enmity with Everton, details of which can be found here.) They have also battled for Premier League supremacy with Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea and, especially, for the best part of a glittering decade, Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal. Plenty of reasons for simmering feuds there.

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