Southend United

Southend United
	Southend United
Basic data
Surname	Southend United Football Club
Seat	Southend-on-Sea , England
founding	1906
Board	Ron Martin
Website	southendunited.co.uk
First soccer team
Head coach	Mark Molesley
Venue	Roots Hall , Prittlewell
Places	12.306
league	EFL League Two
2019/20	▼ 22nd place ( EFL League One )
home	Away

Southend United (officially: Southend United Football Club ) - also known as The Shrimpers or The Blues - is an English football club from Prittlewell / Southend-on-Sea and since the 2020/21 season in the EFL League Two , the third highest English division, active.

history

Foundation phase

The club was founded in 1906 during a get-together at the Blue Boars pub in Prittlewell , the southern part of which was once called Southend , to establish another club alongside the existing Southend Athletic club .

In order to clearly distinguish itself from the red club colors of Athletic, Southend United chose blue jerseys and moved into the Roots Hall venue , not far from the Blue Boar . In the founding year, the club joined the second division of the Southern League , which the club left after two consecutive championships in 1908 and then played in the first class of the Southern League. In the first season Harold Halse scored 91 goals and then moved to Manchester United .

Southend United then commuted between the first and second division of the Southern League and joined the Football League in 1920 to act there as a founding member of the new Third Division South . At the same time, a new place was found with the Kursaal Amusement Park , where the club's home games were to be played.

Stay in the third and fourth division

After a 17th place in the table in the first season, the club played for many years in the third division, with third places in 1932 and 1950 being the club's best results for the time being. In 1938, Southend United moved to the Grainger Road Greyhound Stadium before the game was interrupted shortly thereafter due to World War II. This also interrupted the career of the club's record international player George McKenzie , who was active for Southend United in the 30s and made nine appearances for the Irish national team.

After the resumption of game operations, construction began on a new stadium in Roots Hall in 1953, with the financing exclusively from the club's supporters, before they then handed it over to the club in the 1960s. When the third division became a single-track Third Division in 1958 , Southend United qualified for it by a seventh place in the previous season, but then rose in 1966 for the first time in its club's history and played in the Fourth Division until 1972 . On January 10, 1979, the FA Cup game against Liverpool saw the highest attendance ever with 31,090 visitors.

During their stay in the lowest English division, the club achieved two exceptionally high victories in the FA Cup in 1968 , when FC King's Lynn were defeated 9-0 and then Brentwood Town 10-1 in the first two rounds . In the year of the rise, the Scot Billy Best and the future Chelsea player Bill Garner formed a successful storm duo.

After a further descent to the fourth division in 1976, the club managed to return to the third division in 1978 as a runner-up behind Watford FC . The relegation in 1980 was followed by a good season as champion of the fourth division, with the new coach Dave Smith in particular raising expectations for a better future. These suffered a setback, however, when the nightclub owner Anton Johnson took over the majority of the shares in the club and then nearly ruined it. After his arrest, Vic Jobson succeeded him as president.

Latest developments since 1990

Under the reign of Jobson, who was never to fully win the affection of the supporters, the club, with David Webb as coach , managed to march straight through from the fourth division to the second division in 1990 and 1991 , which the club even made once on New Year's Day 1992 briefly cited. Twelfth place at the end of the first season meant the club's highest championship ranking ever. Webb fell out with Jobson in May, however, and was replaced by Colin Murphy, who signed Stan Collymore from Crystal Palace in his year-long engagement .

The other coaches Barry Fry , Peter Taylor and Ronnie Whelan could not avoid the steady downward trend in the second division, henceforth called First Division , so that Southend United not only moved to the third division in 1997 as bottom of the table, but also as bottom of the table again the following year fourth division had to relegate.

Turbulent times followed, with the club selling the stadium to pay off the accumulated debt. At the same time, the club's management promised to give the club new, positive vigor by building a new stadium by 2003. In terms of sport, however, there was initially no improvement for a long time. That changed when Steve Tilson , a former player for the club, took over as coach in 2003 .

The first positive sign came in 2004, when Southend United made it to a cup final for the first time in their history and narrowly missed the LDV Vans Trophy after losing 2-0 to Blackpool FC , with 20,000 Southend United supporters entering the team Millennium Stadium to Cardiff . After Tilson had initially only been an interim coach, he now looked after the team permanently and led them to another final in the LDV Vans Trophy competition in 2005, which after another 2-0 defeat, now against AFC Wrexham , not again could win. Nevertheless, the promotion to the third division, which one could ensure after play-off victories against Northampton Town and Lincoln City . In the following season then succeeded as champions of the immediate march through to the second highest English division, the Football League Championship , in which the club played from 2006. However, the club did not succeed in establishing itself in the championship and preventing relegation to League One in the long term.

After relegation to League Two in 2010, the former Hull City coach Phil Brown was hired in 2013, who achieved promotion to League One with the club in 2015 after an exciting final against Wycombe Wanderers (7: 6 after penalties). In the 2016/017 season, the entry into the play-offs for the championship was missed by just one point.