While the victory against Coventry was welcome a defeat at the hands of Eastleigh Borough Council – which last

While the victory against Coventry was welcome, a defeat at the hands of Eastleigh Borough Council – which last week turned down the Saints planning application for a new stadium – has once again thrown the club’s long-term future into doubt.
“This was a huge game for the football club. One of the biggest games in a long long time,” Dave Jones, the Southampton manager, said afterwards. “I’ve tried to play that down this week so that the players haven’t suffered the jitters. We absolutely had to get three points today and I’m delighted we’ve done so,” he added.The win – the first of the season, the first in any competitive fixture since the 4-2 victory at West Ham in April, and the first at home since a defeat of Newcastle in March – was due largely to Matt Le Tissier, who made the two most telling contributions of the encounter. His first, after 24 minutes, was to rise at the far post to head in a cross coolly, and his second, 20 minutes later, was to feed an inch-perfect pass into the box for Egil Ostenstad to meet and put into the net.”We know what he [Le Tissier] is capable of and, for the first 45 minutes, he was at his best,” Jones said. “What we wanted was another 45 minutes from him in the second half but we didn’t get the ball to him quickly enough.”Gordon Strachan, the Coventry manager, did not dwell on the two gilt- edged chances his side missed – Darren Huckerby headed over when he should have scored after 58 minutes and then Steve Froggatt shot wide in front of an open goal two minutes later – and was happy that Dion Dublin had at least scored a consolation goal.

He might have concerns, however, if his team – who managed to move up a place despite losing – continue to throw away similar opportunities regularly.Jones will not have been too unhappy with his side’s overall performance. With Mark Hughes settling into his creative midfield role, and with Ostenstad, Le Tissier and Stuart Ripley all playing to their potential, the Saints have an improved shape and determination.Desperate though the situation might still appear – Jones’ team are still three points adrift at the bottom with five points from 10 games. “There’s a long way to go and I know I’m stating the obvious,” Jones said. “But we fully deserved to get a point [from the 1-1 draw] at Arsenal last weekend and that helped give us the confidence to play the way we did today. It’s important now that we build on this result.”Building, in the literal sense, is something Southampton’s chairman, Rupert Lowe, would like to see happening at the club soon. Plans to construct a new 25,000-seat stadium at Stoneham, near junction five of the M27 and close to Southampton airport, have been under discussion for eight years but last week, Eastleigh Council, the authority within which the proposed site lies, effectively refused permission for the project by rejecting proposals for commercial facilities that would accompany the stadium.

“It is all very well saying “yes” to community facilities and stadia if you say “no” to the financial engine to create them,” Lowe said in Saturday’s programme notes. The council, while not opposing a “community stadium” – for athletics, gymnastics and county sports events as well as football – in principle, have rejected plans by Southampton Leisure Holdings plc (the company that owns the football club) to build a supermarket and multiplex cinema alongside their proposed new ground at Stoneham to add commercial viability to the plan.The Dell – maximum capacity, 15,252 – is simply not big enough to sustain a Premiership football club, with all its attendant financial demands for transfer fees and wages, in the current era, and Lowe, a businessman with a background in the City, is now looking to an alternative site, a disused gasworks, in the St Mary’s area of the city. “The performance was down on what we’ve been used to over the past few weeks.”It is disappointing that we haven’t been scoring goals but we will just have to keep working away at that aspect of our game,” the former Rangers manager added. In Duncan Ferguson he has one of the Premiership’s most feared strikers, and either Ibrahima Bakayoko or Danny Cadamateri can complement the Scottish captain’s strength with their pace and mobility. Yet Everton have now failed to score in seven of their 10 League matches, five of which have ended as no-score draws.Bakayoko had a rasping shot palmed over the bar by Kevin Pressman and Cadamarteri was sporadically threatening when he replaced the Ivory Coast striker towards the end, but Ferguson rarely shook off the close attention of Emerson Thome, and when he did it was to send a powerful header over the bar and skew a volley painfully wide.”We had one or two opportunities near the end where we might have got the points but Wednesday could have snatched it themselves,” Smith added.

It is very frustrating,” Wilson said.”Facing 11 games without Di Canio will be difficult. Paolo is not an out-and-out striker – but he opens teams up and that is what we missed today.”The problem of the Everton manager, Walter Smith, is not one of personnel, but of penetration. Both sides have lost the knack of scoring and as Everton rarely do anything but draw these days and Wednesday had not done so all season and so were overdue for one, the writing was on the wall in letters 10 feet high.
It was a dour encounter that fully lived down to expectations, with defences in the ascendant, creativity at a premium and even the foul weather failing to induce the errors that might have broken the deadlock.Wednesday’s problems in the striking department are well documented, but with the delinquent Paolo Di Canio joined on the sidelines by the injured Benito Carbone and Petter Rudi, the service to their front runners was never going to be of the silver variety.Andy Hinchcliffe, pushed up into midfield to try to fill the creativity gap, was the nearest thing to a playmaker Wednesday could muster, but neither Andy Booth nor Ritchie Humphreys came close to scoring their first League goals of the season, hard though the twin strikers worked.The Wednesday manager, Danny Wilson, needed no reminding that buying a quality striker must now be his top priority, but despite having the cash at his disposal he is not finding it easy.”Premiership clubs are not keen to release a quality player to us who may come back to haunt them. Substitutes not used: Kvarme, Fowler, Harkness, Friedel (gk).Nottingham Forest (4-4-2): Beasant; Bonalair, Hjelde, Chettle, Rogers; Stone, Gemmill, Armstrong, Bart-Williams; Freedman, Shipperley. Substitutes not used: Louis-Jean, Lyttle, Gray, Harewood, Crossley (gk).Referee: S Dunn (Bristol).Booking: Forest: Hjelde.Man of the match: Owen.Attendance: 44,595.. JUST AS Sheffield’s best-known product comes with the word “stainless” attached, this match had “goal-less” written all over it from the start.

He can scarcely afford to leave out his best player.Goals: Owen (10) 1-0; Freedman (18) 1-1; Owen (23) 2-1; Owen pen (71) 4-1; Owen (77) 5-1.Liverpool (4-4-2): James; Heggem, Carragher, Staunton, Bjornebye; McManaman (Thompson, 77), McAteer, Ince, Berger; Owen, Riedle. “But sometimes he’s trying too much.”Unlike Evans and Houllier, Bassett has few options. He must eliminate the defensive howlers that undermined the team’s cause in this match, resolve the Pierre van Hooijdonk affair to fund the strengthening of his attack, and hope Steve Stone steers clear of further injury and can conjure more of the magic he produced in one mesmerising moment to set up Dougie Freedman’s goal “Stoney’s improving with every game,” Bassett said. Expediency may ultimately be the determining factor.Liverpool’s other manager, Roy Evans, resisted any temptation to claim credit for Owen’s rejuvenation, contenting himself with: “No one will ever know if it was the right decision.”He did reaffirm his intention to go on protecting his precious and precocious asset and, in justifying his strategy, took what amounted to a side swipe at Glenn Hoddle, saying: “England won’t rest him.”Owen’s first League goals for almost two months earned Liverpool’s first maximum points in six matches, which reveals as much about Forest’s inadequacies as the 18-year-old’s pre-eminence.Dave Bassett’s post-match observation that “fortunately, we still have 28 games to go,” is indicative that he has begun to prepare himself for a winter-long struggle against relegation. Owen and Fowler ought to represent the partnership of the future, but, as yet, theirs seems the least compatible combo of the three. The inference is he will now be given the opportunity to fully recuperate.A cop-out? Perhaps.