Southampton FC ace destroyed Watford in 180 minutes: View | OneFootball

Remember when Rickie Lambert absolutely annihilated the Championship for a season before banging goals in for Southampton in the Premier League, playing for England, joining Liverpool, and then disappearing? Good times.

Maybe not so if you were one of the other 23 teams in the second tier during the 11/12 campaign, as the free scoring Scouser got a goal against over half of the division that season; having netted 27 times overall.

One team suffered that fate more than most though, with the Hornets of Watford on the receiving end of a Lambert masterclass both home and away, as he netted five times against them during the league campaign.

Five goals in an hour and a half of football. The goalkeeper beaten every 36 minutes. This was Lambert in his teeth-gritting, defender-bullying, screamer-scoring best, and Saints fans were lapping it up.

Rickie Lambert Southampton record vs Watford

Lambert had established himself as one of the EFL’s supreme goal-getters by the time he made the move to St Mary’s, having had prolific spells at Bristol Rovers and Rochdale before becoming a Saint.

A striker known for his knack for producing the sublime and sometimes outright ridiculous in the lower echelons of the professional game, the move to the former Premier League side marked Lambert’s biggest opportunity at the age of 27, and it was one he took with both hands.

A 37-goal season in his first campaign with the club in League One laid down a marker for what was to come during his time in red and white; with teammates in the mould of Adam Lallana, Morgan Schneiderlin and Michail Antonio highlighting just how much class wriggled within the Saints side of the time.

Despite his goalscoring antics, promotion wasn’t secured at the first time of asking from the third tier, with another 20+ season to follow earning his side another stab at Championship football, having finished second behind an upwardly mobile Brighton and Hove Albion side.

Finally, some nine years after his Football League debut for Stockport County, Rickie Lee Lambert would be given the chance to shine above the third tier, and it wasn’t long before he had taken to the stage and stolen the limelight.

Eight goals in his first nine appearances of the season had already proven that the striker was ready to perform on a higher level, and yet still Watford didn’t heed the warning when they made the journey south to St Mary’s in the October of 2011.

While Southampton were a side that were going places under Nigel Adkins, the Hornets malaise at this time in their history saw them meander in mid table for four straight years, making them prime fodder for a striker like Lambert to steamroll over.

Not that he needed to even do much to be given the opportunities to add to his season’s tally in the first meeting between the two sides; with a penalty either side of half-time giving his side a two-goal advantage.

Goals from Guly Do Prado and Lee Holmes rounded off a 4-0 victory for the home side that day, continuing a run that would see them taste defeat just twice in the opening 17 league matches of the season.

Although the Saints had a star-studded team for the level, much of what was going right was going through their striker; a goal there, a brace here, a hat-trick sprinkled on top, the man just couldn’t stop finding the back of the net. We were all walking in a Lambert Wonderland.

Everyone apart from Watford, that is. As the Hornets hadn’t learned their lesson from their previous meeting with the lethal lynchpin by the time he came to visit them at Vicarage Road.

Rickie Lambert continues to dominate Hornets for Southampton

With the opener gifted to the forward after Tomasz Kuszczak came steaming out of his goal to grab thin air, Lambert displayed his class soon after with a first-time effort from outside the penalty area nestling in the bottom corner to double the advantage.

Another spot-kick gave him the chance to round off his hat-trick in the second stanza, and he did so with as much explosivity as you’d imagine; with the stanchions seemingly lifting off their hinges with the power emitted from the strike.

Lambert scores. Southampton win. Copy and paste. Rinse and repeat. It was the tale of his time scaling the leagues with the Saints, as he made defences pay for their sins.

He was one of the most exciting players to watch when he rampaged through the EFL, and rightly deserved his chance to shine on the highest stage.

Watford fans would have been sick of the sight of his fist in the air and beaming grin as he tucked another strike away though, even if it was just the one season they came face to face.