SOCCER ANGLES:It was breathtaking to be at Bloomfield Road last Tuesday night to witness, up close, how Ryan Giggs can still bend a game to his will

TO CALLit an epiphany would be a bit of a stretch, but at Bloomfield Road, Blackpool, on Tuesday night there was an experience that could be described as something like a personal reawakening.

It came in the second half of a match that merited the overused adjective “compelling”.

As Manchester United worked their way back into a game that seemed pretty well lost during a first half in which the joyful Blackpool, sparked by the all-angles passing of Charlie Adam, moved 2-0 ahead, it became clear, right in front of us in the temporary East stand, that Ryan Giggs was the catalyst of change.

It is hardly the first time that has been said of a player now 37. The travelling United support will have seen it many times but what some of them may have felt, as your correspondent did, was the proximity of Giggs.

It was not touching distance but at Bloomfield Road, even in the hastily reconfigured stand, Giggs was sometimes just two or three yards away.

He was certainly no farther than that when he pulled down the ball in the 74th minute with the nonchalance of a natural, then in the same movement drifted an exquisite chip to the feet of Javier Hernandez who duly made the score 2-2.

The travelling fans went berserk, as they are entitled to do in such circumstances, but for the neutral there was also a thrill. It was all about being so close physically to Giggs.

Apologies for those who have front-row seats at whatever venue, but most don’t. Most see Giggs or whoever from a long way off at a ground like Old Trafford.

But the intimacy of Bloomfield Road, the reach-out closeness was different. Suddenly that debate about the future of London’s Olympic stadium in Stratford was different too.

Whether the stadium should even fall into the hands of a professional football club is one thing – and surely financial provision should have been guaranteed for the Olympic stadium to remain an athletics centre. That does seem fairly central to the whole legacy thing.

But if it is to be Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United who move into Stratford then the natural sympathy felt for West Ham took a blow on Tuesday.

So far it has seemed that West Ham have the moral and geographic argument that Spurs do not. Stratford is the location of the Olympic stadium and Stratford is part of Hammers’ “territory”. In keeping the Olympic track around the pitch, West Ham would, moreover, be honouring the London Olympics’ promise to do so.

Tottenham’s plan is based on the need to get more punters in to be able to compete with Champions League rivals, notably Arsenal. That’s about finance, and the ground isn’t even in Tottenham. You are moving dangerously close to franchise-land there.

But Spurs have an argument about football atmosphere that has been just about their best card. They say that in retaining an athletics track around the pitch, West Ham are losing an authentic part of the English game.

On Tuesday night in Blackpool that card held more weight. Seeing Giggs excel at such close quarters was that good.

Even if he had been the opposite, people would have been able to say that – at close quarters – they saw Giggs on the way down. It was a reminder that proximity talks.

But then you step back. You think about another converted athletics stadium and its dynamics, the Commonwealth Games stadium now occupied by Manchester City.

At Eastlands you are not far from the action. It is possible to be quite near Carlos Tevez.

Yet as at so many grounds, the atmosphere at City can be so flat you think there is a problem. And then you think of Maine Road and how great it was. What a football ground, slap bang in the middle of huddled red-brick terraced streets. Yet the stadium itself was vast – it once held over 84,000 and the pitch was 119 yards long by 79 yards wide. Huge.

Stand on or close to the Kippax and you could be 30 yards away from the nearest player. Yet that was not the optical effect.

Geometrically, Maine Road was much less intimate than Upton Park. That is part of West Ham’s appeal, the shaking cameras on the gantry on a big night for the club. But was/is Upton Park better than Maine Road?

That brings us back to personal experience and, ultimately, what is being played in front of you. Enough of you will have watched questionable quality up close to know that it’s not magical. Conversely in the giant bowl of the Nou Camp, Barcelona fans are watching something brilliant unfold. Would they like to be closer, or is the stadium all part of the experience and spectacle? It’s a personal thing.

But to see Ryan Giggs at Blackpool was unforgettable. It brought back words used by Simon Inglis in his superb book The Football Grounds of Great Britain.

In the section on West Ham, which might make some of them think, Inglis wrote of Upton Park: “The goal-line is only two yards from the front terrace . . . players cannot fail to see, hear or even smell the crowd and sense their delight or their derision . . . the dimensions make the greatest player seem human but his greatest acts that much more breathtaking.”

Adkins hoping to lead the Saints to better times

Hosting Manchester United today will remind southampton of great days inthe FA Cup

TODAY MANCHESTER United go to Southampton's St Mary's stadium in the FA Cup. It is a fixture that has rekindled memories of the 1976 final when Bobby Stokes scored the only goal against Tommy Docherty's United team.

But in Southampton it might remind them of another FA Cup final. It was in 2003. It was a less happy occasion, Arsenal triumphing 1-0 this time, a goal from Robert Pires.

Southampton, managed by Gordon Strachan, had just finished eighth in the Premier League with James Beattie scoring 23 goals – only Ruud van Nistelrooy and Thierry Henry got more.

Southampton had been in the Premier League from its breakaway, and for the previous 14 years in the old First Division. They could be considered part of the top-flight establishment.

But the following February Strachan resigned, to spend more time with his family, and within two years of that 2003 final in Cardiff, Southampton were relegated. That set in motion an avalanche. By 2009 the Saints were marching into the third tier and no less than seven managers had come and gone since Strachan. Then came Alan Pardew, then he was sacked.

So now it's Nigel Adkins, the qualified physiotherapist who did such a good job at Scunthorpe. They say the avalanche is over. We'll see.