1937–38 Southampton F.C. season
season of football team
The 1937–38 season was the 43rd season of competitive football by Southampton and the club's 16th in the Second Division of the Football League. Despite an appalling start which saw the side spend much of the first month of the campaign in the relegation zone, the Saints finished the season 15th in the league table – their highest position in four years. With manager Tom Parker entering his first full season as Southampton manager, the club made a large number of signings in the summer, including high-scoring winger Harry Osman and young inside-forward Ted Bates, who would go on to make over 200 appearances for the club and serve as manager for almost 20 years. Southampton finished the 1937–38 season with 15 wins, nine draws and 18 losses, six positions but just three points above the first relegation place.
Southampton entered the 1937–38 FA Cup in the third round against fellow Second Division strugglers Nottingham Forest. Despite enjoying the majority of chances on goal and going into half-time on level terms, the Saints lost 1–3 to Forest, exiting the tournament at the same stage as in all but one of the previous ten seasons. In addition to the Second Division and the FA Cup, Southampton played three friendly games during the 1937–38 season. The first, against a side put together by the Army Football Association (FA) in February, ended in a 7–2 win with Gerry Kelly scoring four and Ray Parkin scoring three. The second friendly saw Southampton beating a team representing the North Dorset FA 8–0 in April. The final friendly in May was against the newly crowned First Division champions Arsenal, which they lost 1–2.
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This entry incorporates text from “1937–38 Southampton F.C. season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.