Top 69 Southampton Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Football is a fickle game - if I do get the jeers and the boos I'm just going to take it as them missing me playing down there because I miss Southampton. I miss the fans and I miss the good times we had down there. Of course I do.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents' house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey.

I've always liked the way Southampton play football, high intensity and really aggressive playing. The way they play with the full-backs I'm not going to be sitting back for the whole game, it is going to give me opportunities to get forward and show what I can give in attack.

My grandmother told a story that when they used to leave from Southampton to go into the City, because he had apartment buildings in Queens - I was born in Astoria, Queens - they had apartment buildings in Queens and Manhattan, different businesses, and she wanted to pick blueberries on the side of the road and he wouldn't stop, so my grandma used to throw her purse out the window. She never had less than $4,000 cash, back in the 20s, and he would then stop the car and she would pick blueberries. And, he never had a record.

My dad had a spell when he came out of coaching doing some work with underprivileged children on quite a rough council estate in Southampton to help the kids and take them out to places. I used to go along with him. I used to play football with them, mess about with them. I was only 13 or 14 and became good friends with them.

When I was younger, I had two players: Luke Shaw and Gareth Bale. When Shaw was at Southampton, he was a left-back, and I loved watching him bomb up and down the wing, create goals, score goals, so I think I try to emulate that. Gareth Bale - same thing, really.

I bought a dodgy gold ring off a guy in Southampton. He told me to check it was real gold by heating it up with a lighter and pressing it against my skin, because real gold doesn't burn. I still have the scar on my left hand.

I had beautiful years with Southampton - great club, great people, great supporters - and I'm very proud of my four years.

My father describes himself as a Pole of Lithuanian descent. At Southampton University, he read aeronautical engineering and then the family moved to Hong Kong - this was before I was born - where he designed aeroplanes. Back in the U.K., he worked as a civil engineer, although every spare minute was spent researching his family's history.