SPURS 2 - SAINTS 0

But you can't put a price on what Stuart Gray needs at the moment.

The Saints boss is hungrily chasing a striker but what he really needs is that certain, indefinable something that can't be bought on the transfer market.

Oh, that it could be bought off supermarket shelves; a bottle of belief, a carafe of confidence, a packet of poise.

To view Saints' third defeat, simply insert a video tape of the previous two and press 'Play'.

They play well, match the opposition for much of the game, create chances, don't take them, and then pay the price as the opposition score twice to take the cigar.

The 0s in the goals for and points column are staring out like a pair of specs, and Gray knows what he has to do to prevent Saints season becoming a game of catch-up. Three games isn't the time to start having the vapours, but a pattern is emerging.

As the Big Grudge Match, it hardly lived up to the Ali-Frazier showdowns, and what was almost pre-determined to the point where you could put your house on it was the fact that Richards would have a stormer.

He was probably the best player on view, narrowly edging out Teddy Sheringham who used all his ways and wiles in the way that Saints would love to be able to employ Matthew Le Tissier.

To try and win the tactical mind-game, Gray tweaked his line-up into a flexible 4-3-3, with the effect that in the first-half certainly, Spurs wing-backs were employed almost full-time on defensive duties.

Saints had width, and with Jo Tessem given licence to break forward Saints looked more innovative and flexible than at any time this season.

But all that enterprise was discarded like unwanted baggage in the last third. In the box, Saints had nothing to declare, and as the chances were created it was clear they needed someone with a bit of devil and derring-do in the box.

Inevitably, Richards provided Neil Sullivan's hairiest moment with a beefy header from Rory Delap's long throw, the keeper's parry falling just behind Uwe Rosler.

Rosler himself powered one header straight at Sullivan, while Marian Pahars failed by millimetres to make contact with Kevin Davies's cross, but might have done so had he more belief and confidence to gamble on his ability.

And that was the tale of Saints up front, where they lacked that self-belief, summed up by one second-half break where Spurs were caught short-handed three-on-three.

Pahars, though, passed the ball and responsibility instead of committing Goran Bunjevcevic, who was back-pedalling faster than an Italian tank regiment, and, even then, Davies failed to run Ledley King from out wide, and the chance was frittered away.

Self-belief is something Sheringham has in skip loads. At 35, he is proof that there's no point in growing old if you don't get wise. Finding all paths up front blocked like a Foot and Mouth restriction order by Richards and Tahar El-Khalej, he dropped back into that nasty no-man's-land which dares central defenders to come out and leave a gap behind them.

It was Darren Anderton who opened Saints up for Les Ferdinand to side-foot a first-half volley against Paul Jones cross-bar, but that was the closest Spurs came against a stubborn Saints defence in which Richards and El-Khalej asked all the questions asked of them.

Spurs twigged Saints' lack of punch, and released men from sentry duty. And after 75 minutes, Saints were guilty of almost criminal neglect as the recently introduced James Beattie failed to track Christian Ziege, who had a standing start, to muscle his way past Rory Delap and dink the ball around Jones with the outside of his left boot.

When Saints go behind there appears no way back, and Sheringham was inevitably involved in the second goal, dropping deep to receive Gary Doherty's pass and laying the ball into the path of Simon Davies to take on the burst and finish.

Only a miraculous point-blank save by Jones from Ferdinand's header denied Spurs a third, which would have been harsher on a Saints side who will find it hard to survive on a diet of hard-luck tales.