Lopez a Southampton and England star in the 1970’s, was at Bolton’s Reebok Stadium last week for a Hall of Fame induction which also included the likes of Alan Shearer, Tony Adams and Roy Keane.

The Saints women’s team manager sat at the same table as Manchester United captain Keane, whose own boss Sir Alex Ferguson sat at an adjacent table. That was very handy for Lopez – or for her mother, to be more precise!

“I took my mum with me,” said Lopez, “and as she’s a Man United fan she was able to get autographs. Roy Keane and Sir Alex were very nice and it was tremendous to be in the company of so many great football people.”

After an evening in the north west it was quickly back to the south coast for Lopez, who as Head of Women’s Football at Southampton FC, oversees the girls’ Academy and Centre of Excellence as well as managing the first team.

The senior side started the current FA Nationwide Women’s Premier League campaign poorly, losing their first six Southern Division games, but they have won each of their subsequent three outings to climb out of the relegation zone.

Now Lopez is targeting a top four place come the end of the season, while there is also the little matter of that derby clash against Pompey to consider ahead of December’s FA Cup third round day.

“The Cup match will be the first of three meetings in the space of six weeks with Portsmouth,” pointed out Lopez, “and because of the rivalry between the two clubs there’ll be tension around all of the games.

“Vanessa Raynbird (the Portsmouth manager) and I played together for Southampton so we’re mates, but the Southampton-Pompey rivalry is so intense that even a game of tiddlywinks between the two clubs would be seen as a 'needle' fixture.

“The best thing I can say about The FA Cup draw is that at least we’ve been given home advantage, which we can hopefully make good use of. But it’s going to be a tough game because Pompey have made a decent start to the season.

“They’re fourth in the table at the moment, that’s six places higher than us, but I do feel we can climb that high ourselves with the quality of players we have even though we’ve got a very young side this season.

“For the second year in a row we lost a number of key players to other clubs during the close season, and that has meant pitching in girls who are having to cope with the physical and mental demands of Premier League football at a very young age.

“Our 16-player squad against Watford last week, for example, had only one girl over 20. The rest were 19 or under, the youngest only 14 – but 12 of them had come though our Centre of Excellence and that’s what gives us hope for the future.

“We’ve developed some tremendous players - a good number of whom have gone on to become internationals - through our Centre of Excellence and Academy, the continuation of that work will keep us strong as a club.

“In the short term at first team level we obviously want to go on climbing the table and I believe we can finish fourth or fifth. Then there’s The FA Cup game against Pompey to start thinking about – but I’m making no predictions about that one!”