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Sunday, April 29, 2007
It's likely that Manager Burley's favourite striking partnership is Saganowski and Jones, but they rarely seem to be fit at the same time.
For the critical visit to Norwich, we went with Jones and Best, which meant Wright-Phillips returning to the bench after his goal against Leeds, and he was joined there by McGoldrick, back from Bournemouth.
The home side had no more incentive than to entertain their own followers, and fortunately they seemed to elect for a stroll in the spring sunshine instead. Saints certainly enjoyed the better of the first half, but still struggled to find that little bit extra that would break the deadlock.
That was until the half hour mark, when they took the lead with a rather a good goal struck home by Best. It was just about enough to see us to a half time lead, with a bit of a panic ending with the ball bouncing onto the post off Baird, apparently. It was also enough to secure all three points as the Canaries took a long time before adding much urgency to their play, and Saints held their nerve.
Things would have been a lot easier had Best not been fractionally offside as he converted Guthrie's cross, and in fact we ended the game with Wright-Phillips partnering McGoldrick - albeit for the last of the 90 minutes, plus an agonising three minutes of injury time.
So Saints now approach their last regular season game in the last play-off place, but with no lee-way at all as they stay above Stoke only by virtue of having scored more goals. Well no-one said it was going to be easy after throwing away all those silly points earlier in the season.
Man of the Match: Danny Guthrie, voted in ahead of Baird by the majority of a bumper LSSC trip after we at last enjoyed a trip out of Liverpool Street.
