There are afternoons at Preston that test a supporter's patience as much as the team's, and for an hour this was one of them. The home side took a shape designed to frustrate, to slow, to ugly-up proceedings, and for most of the first period they succeeded.
But there is a hardness to this Southampton side that was absent a year ago. the captain has been magnificent as a pivot, shielding a back three that has conceded only once in its last five outings, and when the moment came — a ball into the box, a brush of the arm, referee Halliwell's whistle — Scienza did what Scienza does.
Two-one, three points, and now to Middlesbrough. We have said it before and we will say it again: beat the leaders at home on Saturday, and this season becomes something we will still be talking about twenty years hence.
When I think of this club, I think of Matt Le Tissier — and of the afternoons that made the rest of us care. — The Editor
Of the Championship
From mid-table place, a view of the table.
There is, as ever, much to be said about Southampton. The club plays in the English football pyramid, and this paper proposes to say some of it, at length.
This paper has never pretended to the sort of cool that our broadsheet rivals affect. We are supporters first, correspondents second; and we would ask of our readers only that when the whistle sounds on Saturday, you remember what it took to put Saints where they are now.
— The Editor, Stadium