SAINTS have shown the red card to a long standing deal with catering giant Compass Group, substituting it for an in house alternative after nearly a decade.

Under the banner Saints Event Management (SEM), the caterer has been supplying up to 1,500 meals on matchdays since 2001 and won a three-year extension to the £3m a year contract in 2007 but the arrangement has now been terminated.

Compass referred all calls on the matter to Saints, who were unavailable for comment.

A letter sent by SEM to clients earlier this month read: “As of the 1st of June 2010, Saints Event Management, part of Compass Group UK & I, will no longer be operating at Southampton Football Club as the club have decided to take the catering and events business in house.”

As well as providing corporate hospitality at St Mary’s, SEM served the food at gala dinners, exhibitions and conferences throughout the year and had more recently sealed a deal to cater for events at the cruise terminals, some of the largest venues in the city.

The nine year partnership with the club has occasionally hit the headlines, not least when former chairman Rupert Lowe hailed the quality of the food provided by SEM as a defence against fierce criticism of the club’s relegation from the Premiership in 2005.

“Our match-day and nonmatch- day catering is the envy of other clubs,” he wrote in his programme notes for the game against Manchester United that confirmed Saints’ relegation to the Championship, provoking the ire of already furious fans.

The on plate fare has frequently won more plaudits than that on the pitch, with Saints chefs beating Arsenal, Everton and even the new Wembley Stadium to lift a gold medal at the International Football Culinary Challenge at London’s ExCeL exhibition centre in 2008.