Mere silver cannot buy Strachan's happiness

"It is 27 years since Southampton won the FA Cup, do you think it is time you won it again?" Gordon Strachan does not hesitate. "No, I think we should wait another 27 years – that'll make it even more special." Strachan seizes on a stray question the way he cajoles his midfield to snap up a stray pass.

In this kind of mood the Southampton manager is irrepressible. Just like he wants his players to be. He jumps from an anecdote about the showers suddenly packing up at the club's training ground – "there I was with shampoo in my hair..." – to questioning the insurance value of the FA Cup before him – "10m? Aye, 10m what, rupees?" – to expounding his football philosophy. "If you get them working hard, it does not become hard work," he says, mantra-like. Hard work is his credo.

"It becomes habit. Hard work changes into habit. They think it is hard work to start with and then they realise that it is what they are meant to do and it becomes a habit." But so, if he is to be believed, is having fun. Surprisingly this latter-day Stakhanovite does not judge success by silverware.

"I do not gauge my career in trophies," he says. "I gauge it by how happy I was." Suffice to say at the moment he is very happy – and in touching distance of Southampton's first trophy since 1976. Expectation in the town is brimming from the "We're on the march with Strachan's Army" merchandising – for a Scot a wince-inducing reminder of Ally McLeod and the 1978 World Cup brouhaha – to the local newspaper producing a 24-page FA Cup fever supplement. "We are enjoying the excitement and quite rightly so," he says prior to the Saints' first semi-final for 17 years.

So how special a game is it for Strachan? "I will not know until afterwards. If we achieve something, then I will tell you it feels fantastic, if we get beat then I will say it meant nothing." Nevertheless, expectation on the south coast is bursting. Southampton play Watford tomorrow, Portsmouth may confirm promotion to the Premiership today, Brighton & Hove Albion can still defy the drop from the First Division – and then there is Havant & Waterlooville, in the semi-finals of the FA Trophy. The non-League side are managed by Liam Daish, the former Irish international and something of a Strachan protégé.

The two were together at Coventry City where Strachan, 46, served his managerial apprenticeship. The furthest they got in the Cup was the last eight in 1998 before Daish retired the following year. Was there anything the former defender took with him into management? "Aye, a big insurance cheque," says Strachan before Daish can reply.

When he does so it is, again, with reference to that appetite. "The one thing with Gordon when I went there was the work ethic, really, and the enjoyment of working hard and getting that across," he says. "It took a little while to get it through but after you get a few good results they take a step back and think: 'Yeah, that is probably the way to go now'."

Strachan says: "I always thought there was the possibility that he could go into management – because he had to think his way about the park. He was not the quickest man in the world so he had to think his way.

"I was not the strongest or the quickest so I had to think my way too and if you start thinking early in your career how to get rid of obstacles it helps you think later on. Some people are lucky in that they are naturally athletic and naturally brilliant but for the rest of us you do start thinking." Not that Strachan's memory serves him well when it comes to the FA Cup. What does he remember from his only win, in 1985, with Manchester United?

"I've never seen the game. I can't remember much about it and I can't really be bothered watching it," he says. "I'm not a beautiful sight to be honest with you and I try to keep away from watching myself on television. I'm not the best-looking football player ever so I have never bothered." Warming to the theme, he adds: "'I know Kevin Moran got sent off and I remember the big referee, surprise, surprise, it was his last game before he retired... and guess what he does? He sends off the first player ever in an FA Cup. The other good thing about it is I cannot even remember his name. So, whatever his ploy was it did not work because I cannot remember his name." Mike Reilly, the man in the middle tomorrow, beware.

Mischief and fun. And hard work. Anyone who has witnessed a Strachan training session knows the three are not incompatible, whether he is ribbing his players – "that'll be the ex-international James Beattie" – or prowling the perimeter, watchful, deep in thought.

Keep it simple, another Strachan motto. "Just pick the best players and trust them," he says. "I watched Man Utd versus Real Madrid. Tell me what the tactics were? I don't think you can tell me. I watch Real Madrid all the time and the tactics are get your best 11 of the park and trust them. Be fit and good and, that's it." As a consequence, Southampton have kept to the same routine this week. They will train today before heading to their hotel in the Forest of Arden this afternoon. "At Coventry we used to go for a couple of days abroad but here our training has been the same because we believe that our methods this year have been reasonably successful. We have had good wins against good teams so we have just got to keep it the same," says Strachan.

Watford will be shown respect, as have the three other First Division opponents – Millwall, Norwich City and Wolverhampton Wanderers – overcome in this FA Cup run. "If Watford turn in the performance of a lifetime then so be it," Strachan says, betraying what he expects to happen tomorrow.

Winning the Cup would provide a financial windfall – as much as £3.5m – for a club which, prudently, had budgeted for a third-round exit. With Marian Pahars out most of this season and Agustin Delgado either injured or AWOL, too much has fallen on Beattie's shoulders. Some of the money may go on another striker although Strachan, until recently tilting at Europe in the league, insists he is happy with the rest of his resources. "They have got us this far," he says. Come tomorrow evening he will know, a little more, just how much further they can go.