I SUPPOSE like many others, nearly every Christmas card we are receiving mentions the strange year we have had and everyone looking forward to a better 2021.

Football, almost more than anything, has been completely different but it has got by, with 13 games played so far by most teams in the Premier League.

We are even getting people in the ground now, but is 2,000 enough?

I was happy to go back to St Mary’s for the first time for the Sheffield United game on Sunday.

We were in the box that Mr Pat Trant kindly invites us to – but instead of 10 people there were only five with a screen in between.

Obviously, we had masks on and were sitting miles apart, but at least we were able to watch the game and the people on the terraces, to be fair to them, created an atmosphere which was good for the home team.

I think as well, it’s probably much better for the manager, who has already given his team talk beforehand.

As we all know, supporters have paid good money to come in. They will certainly let a player know if he could be doing better or working harder and when there is only 2,000 in, the player will undoubtedly hear and keep their game up.

It was good to see Saints win but I have to feel a bit sorry looking back for Chris Wilder. As we said last week, there’s a lot of Saints connections – not just with the staff but with ex-players as well.

I think it would be a miracle for him to keep Sheffield United up.

Having said that, a manager to come back on the scene this week was Sam Allardyce.

Sam was appointed to take over from Slaven Bilic at West Bromwich Albion. It is his eighth Premier League club and he has never been relegated with the previous clubs.

He has done amazing jobs. I well remember how he kept Sunderland up against all odds.

But the other thing which I think supporters will find different under Sam, is the majority of teams now have their goalkeeper passing to the full-back, who may well then play the ball to the centre-half – with lots more passing going on in the back third than it ever did before.

Sam will remind people what it used to be like. His style of play was to work hard, his players gave 110 per cent and the defenders knew their job was to win the ball and get it up front.

It will be interesting to see, as there are possibly different types of players to what Sam has been used to in the past.

Whereas he is a big, tough-guy type. I was interested and quite pleased to see he had brought back in with him Sammy Lee as his assistant – an ex-Liverpool player and former coach at Saints, and one of the nicest fellas you could ever meet.

He is the balance. With Sam frightening some of the players during the week, Sammy will be the one that puts his arm around them.

They are a very good team and it will be very interesting to see how West Brom go from now on.

With other managers in the news this week, not surprisingly Mr Mourinho - his team Spurs were due to go to Liverpool.

They are both top teams in the Premier League and Mourinho had to have a few comments winding up Mr Klopp before the game, saying how for instance he was going on and on about his team’s injuries.

But the wind-up certainly worked against him, because Liverpool won with a goal in stoppage time. Mourinho’s reaction after that was quite bitter really.

But that is what football is all about, different natures, different responses and let’s hope we can continue having supporters coming in.

After the success, for instance at St Mary’s with a ground as big as ours, hopefully the 2,000 can go up to 3,000 or 4,000 soon, which not only helps the players but the clubs of course, who are wanting the cash income.