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Article: Football: Referee enough to try the patience of a saint; Southampton 2 Birmingham City 0 - Beattie's strikes mask a host of sins at St Mary's.(Sport)
- Article from:
- The Birmingham Post (England)
- Article date:
- December 9, 2002
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Brian Halford
The bare statistics suggest that everything went to form and Birmingham City were swept away by the Premiership's hottest property, James Beattie, but there was a bit more to it than that.
Here at St Mary's, on a bitterly cold December afternoon, Blues' well-documented lack of squad depth was truly exposed and manager Steve Bruce, his options whittled to a minimum by injuries and suspension, could find no answer.
Bruce could only send out a skeleton staff with instructions to try to smother their in-form hosts. It wasn't ...