SAINTS stretched their Premiership goal drought to 397 minutes yesterday.

The club's last league goal was scored by Anders Svensson in the 53rd minute of the 2-1 home loss to Newcastle over a month ago - on September 18th.

Since then, they have fired blanks against Fulham (0-1), Manchester City (0-0), Everton (0-1) and Birmingham (0-0).

Before the Newcastle game Saints draw 0-0 at Charlton and lost 2-1 at Chelsea - where their goal was scored by James Beattie after only 12 seconds!

So Saints have only scored twice in the last seven matches - but only once in the last 629 minutes, or almost 10 and a half hours of Premiership action.

No top flight club has scored fewer league goals than Saints' six, of which half came in Paul Sturrock's last match in charge against Blackburn - Spurs have also netted just six times in 10 matches. And no Premiership club has fired as many blanks as Saints' six this season.

The current league goal famine is the club's worst since Stuart Gray first took over from Glenn Hoddle in March 2001.

Back then Saints went 563 minutes without scoring - the first 32 of them against Everton in Hoddle's last match in charge.

Over nine hours separated Jo Tessem's goal in the 1-0 win over Everton and the 81st minute equaliser Marian Pahars plundered in the 1-1 draw at Newcastle in Gray's sixth game in charge.

In between Saints lost to Ipswich (0-3), Leeds (0-2), Chelsea (0-1), drew with Aston Villa (0-0) and lost to Sunderland (0-1).

Amid all the talk of barren goalscoring runs, one Saint was scoring at the weekend - Tessem grabbing his first goal for Millwall during the fourth game of his loan spell in a 2-2 draw against Cardiff.

STEVE WIGLEY has become the first post-War Saints manager to fail to win any of his first eight league games in charge.

Yesterday's point against Birmingham means Wigley has taken just three points - all from Sky-televised goalless draws - in his first eight matches.

As the Daily Echo revealed last Friday, both Stuart Gray and Graeme Souness also recorded just two draws and no wins from their first seven matches in the hot-seat. But both those bosses won their eighth game in charge.