“He didn’t hear me the first time so I repeated it and for some reason he took exception.”At least he got a better view as Blackburn enjoyed a period of ascendancy that lasted until the conclusion. “I said ‘I didn’t know you were a Tottenham supporter’,” Souness explained. Souness was angry when no foul was awarded after a challenge by Carr on Reid and, after an exchange with the referee, he was ordered into the stand. Andy Todd should have done the same with a free header from Brett Emerton’s corner two minutes later but made such a hash of his jump that his effort flew parallel to the goal and finished as a throw-in.Souness, whose side had lost eight of the previous 10 matches, needed to chase the game and he introduced Steven Reid at half-time, which had rapid implications. Cole immediately raised hopes by outpacing Lucas Radebe but, as would be the case on several occasions, his last touch did not match his first.Although Holland hit a free-kick narrowly wide, Leeds were not just sitting back and after the normally reliable Dean Kiely caused hearts to flutter by dropping a free-kick by Milner, another one from Ian Harte drifted tantalisingly close to the far post.Robinson continued to enjoy a far more comfortable afternoon than he could have imagined. As a consequence, the number of incidents of note could have been counted on a single hand, Dwight Yorke at least forcing a save from Keller with a header after 14 minutes.

The passing was poor and you needed a vivid imagination to believe the players had any imagination at all.The result was a war of defensive attrition as each side waited for the other to make the first significant mistake. In the first half we were nervous and tentative but in the second half we gathered momentum, caused them problems, and deserved the win.” Souness had appealed to the Ewood Park crowd to pump up the volume in his programme notes, although the first half gave little for anyone much to shout about.The wind and rain that had battered the spectators en route to the ground had mercifully relented but the quality of the play would have had you believe that the protagonists were performing in a tempest. Then again, they had not met managerless and clueless Tottenham before.”We’re fast approaching December and we’ve had absolutely no luck this season whatsoever,” Souness said, “so it’s nice to get a wee bit at last. Then fate stepped in to improve his mood rapidly.
There seemed little chance of Blackburn scoring this side of Christmas 2004 when Vratislav Gresko, who had not previously scored for the club, swung an optimistic left foot from a range of 25 yards. The shot probably would have been saved but the ball cannoned off Stephen Carr’s backside and looped past the despairing dive of Kasey Keller.

As a result Blackburn put further daylight between themselves and the bottom three and, to make Souness even more mellow, his side achieved their first clean sheet of the season. For much of yesterday Graeme Souness appeared to be having one of those afternoons he would prefer to forget. His Blackburn team were stuttering, he had been dismissed from the bench after an argument with referee Graham Poll and the home win he needed to ease his relegation concerns seemed a distant prospect. Leicester took the honours at Fratton Park as last season’s top two in Division One renewed hostilities in the Barclaycard Premiership. In fact there could have been no complaints if Viduka had inflicted further punishment at the end, taking Hermann Hreidarsson’s awful back-pass but failing to defeat Chris Perry on the line.. So did the visiting supporters behind his goal, even if the chants of “We’re going to win the League” were on the optimistic side.Jason Euell’s shot on to the roof of the net following a free-kick was the closest Charlton came to an equaliser until the last few minutes, when Robinson, called into action at last, pushed Cole’s header round a post. They did not help themselves by failing to use the wings sufficiently and were too often reduced to lofting the ball forward for the combative Matthias Svensson, who has recently been farmed out to Derby County.By the time Carlton Cole, on loan from Chelsea, replaced Svensson at the interval, the home side had fashioned only one real opportunity, Paul Robinson pushing the ball on to the post from Matt Holland’s header.