Southampton 2-1 Derby

Five in a row. Let that sink in for a moment. Five consecutive wins. If you’d told me that was coming back in the dark days of winter, I’d have checked you for a head injury. But here we are — Southampton 2, Derby 1 — and St Mary’s is starting to feel like a genuinely unpleasant place to visit again. You absolutely love to see it.

Let’s not pretend it was all champagne football from the first whistle, though. Derby came down the M3 with a plan, sat in a compact low block, and for a good chunk of the first half made us look like we were trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube wearing oven mitts. Carlton Morris — who apparently wakes up every morning and chooses violence against Championship defences — stuck one past us on 38 minutes, and suddenly that familiar sinking feeling crept back in. The bloke next to me in the Itchen Stand actually said “here we go again” and I nearly confiscated his season ticket on the spot.

But here’s the thing about this team under Tonda Eckert: they don’t fold. They really, properly don’t fold anymore. We went in at half-time a goal down, 31,000 of us grumbling into our half-time pies, and whatever Eckert said in that dressing room should probably be bottled and sold commercially.

Derby started the second half like men who knew trouble was coming. Two yellows in quick succession — Sanderson on 53, Fraulo on 55 — told you everything about their rising panic. We were squeezing them, suffocating them, monopolising the ball with nearly 62% possession, and the pressure was building like a kettle about to scream.

Then cometh the hour, cometh Léo Scienza. Sixty-two minutes on the clock, and the Brazilian produced one of those moments that makes you grab the nearest stranger and shake them. The man has silk in his boots and mischief in his heart, and when that ball hit the net, St Mary’s absolutely erupted. Level terms, game on, Derby rattled.

Seven minutes later, who else but Taylor Harwood-Bellis — our centre-half moonlighting as a big-game goal threat — rose highest to nod us in front. The man said afterwards he always believed we’d turn it around, and honestly, watching him thump that header home with the conviction of someone ordering their third pint, you couldn’t doubt him. The stadium shook. Grown adults hugged. Someone near me appeared to be crying. Championship football at its gloriously bonkers best.

From there we managed the game like proper adults, Larin collecting a stoppage-time yellow that suggested the “competitive edge” dial was turned up to eleven, but who cares? The final whistle blew, the points were ours, and the good times keep rolling.

Five wins on the spin. The belief is back, the form is electric, and Eckert has this squad playing with a swagger we haven’t seen in ages. Whatever’s in the water at Staplewood, keep it flowing. Next one up — let’s make it six.