Poyet pleasure ends in pain

Chelsea, whose victory at Southampton on Saturday returned them to the top of the Premiership while extending their unbeaten run to 18 matches, do not attract a gush of sympathy when they lose a player.

There is a suspicion, as when Elton John scuffed a pair of shoes or when Carmen Miranda mislaid one of her fruity hats, that the storehouse of riches holds plenty more where that came from; in football, managers of ordinary clubs even exchange charred smiles and talk of odds being evened up.

So at The Dell on Saturday evening the grim faces in the Chelsea dressing-room spoke most eloquently about the importance of Gustavo Poyet, who because of a right knee injury is expected to miss not only tomorrow's match at home to Manchester United but possibly many more. Yesterday Gwyn Williams, the club's assistant manager, said: "We will not know the result of the scan until later in the week. But we are not talking about a short-term injury. It looks like Gustavo will be missing for weeks."

The Uruguayan midfielder, who was carried off after a clumsy, two-footed challenge by Southampton's new signing Patrick Colleter, is his club's 11-goal leading scorer and more besides. His creative skills sometimes represent him as the fulcrum of this exceptional side and his strength makes him equally useful in both penalty areas.

The fact that Chelsea could welcome back Graeme Le Saux, Roberto Di Matteo and Marcel Desailly for tomorrow's match, when Dennis Wise will complete his suspension, helps explain why, elsewhere, there are not too many damp hankies concerning the club's latest casualty.

Contrast Chelsea's plight with that of Southampton, who may have to find replacements for Matthew Le Tissier and Stuart Ripley at Nottingham Forest this afternoon. Mired near the foot of the table, losing two of your most creative players two days before taking on the team upon whose shaky shoulders you stand is not the best recipe for revival.

For Chelsea, Poyet missed six months of last season with a cruciate knee ligament injury and, although he returned to collect a European Cup Winners' Cup medal, his absence weakened the side's Premiership resolve. His goal on Saturday made Chelsea's victory safe and he could prove more difficult to replace than Pierluigi Casiraghi, who is also suffering a long-term knee injury.

Afterwards, the coach Graham Rix said with a shrug: "Gustavo's been on fire recently. We're going to miss him. We always have a theme before a match and the manager's big word before we came here was `personality', though I think he spelt it `personally'. The Dell can be a difficult place to come to and it was stressed that the younger players had to stand up and be men, which is what they did."

The absence of Poyet may tempt the player-manager Gianluca Vialli to return to the side. He played against Tottenham nine days ago, 10 days after his previous appearance against Aston Villa, so he is due. The Spurs game, however, was only his third in the league this season and his match fitness, if not his ability, is in question. As he approaches a year in office he has taken to the job like a duck to l'orange but very few carry it off as player-manager for very long.

The match between the second top and the second bottom sides followed a predictable pattern. Chelsea could even afford Celestine Babayaro, at left-back, to be a little accident prone, while in the middle of defence Frank Leboeuf had such a folly-ridden time it looked like one of those Christmas blooper compilations.

Such was the poise of their young midfielder Jody Morris that none of this seemed to show. Then there were the goals. The first came after 20 minutes, a gentle but accurate volley from Tore Andre Flo after Gianfranco Zola's clever defeat of the offside trap. The second, a tap-in by Poyet, came three minutes into the second half.

"I thought Chelsea showed a lot of grit," said Southampton's manager David Jones. His side, too, showed a fighting spirit. But there are times when struggling sides no longer look masters of their bleak destiny.

SOUTHAMPTON: Jones, Hiley, Colleter, Palmer, Monkou, Lundekvam, Le Tissier (Ripley 25), Oakley (Dodd 81), Ostenstad, Beattie, Kachloul, Ripley (Basham 45). Subs Not Used: Bridge, Stensgaard. Booked: Colleter.

CHELSEA: De Goey, Ferrer, Duberry, Leboeuf, Goldbaek, Petrescu, Morris, Poyet (Terry 73), Babayaro, Flo (Nicholls 83), Zola. Subs Not Used: Forssell, Myers, Hitchcock. Booked: Morris, Babayaro. Goals: Flo 20, Poyet 48. Att: 15,253.

Referee: D Elleray (Harrow-on-the-Hill).