Dell Focus, with John May.

ONE OF the oldest cliches in the games provides a manager with one of his biggest dilemmas.

Never Change A Winning Team, says the old maxim. It's true up to a point, but if a manager has a chance to strengthen a team, he'd be a mug not to take it.

In these days of squad rotation, few managers stick with winning teams so when a player considered by many to be your best defender steps up to the oche for selection, which boss wouldn't grab the chance with both paws?

Thus it was that Glenn Hoddle restored Dean Richards to the heart of his defence.

Did it work? A 3-1 scoreline in which two of the goals were conceded from set pieces hints not.

So was Hoddle wrong to chop and and change the team which had beaten Leeds and coped so admirably defensively?

Again, the final outcome suggests that needless tinkering; if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But if the Premiership is nothing else, it shows that certain horses have to be picked for certain courses.

On the first-half evidence, m'lud, Richards' recall was spot-on.

He was typical Deano; strong in the air, commanding and authorative.

Those first 45 mminutes, with Richards restored alongside his sidekick Claus Lundekvam, provided Saints with defensive stability.

Saints held the line on the edge of the box, and the crosses that came in were always in front of defenders who had full view.

It was M&D for Richards who gobbled most of them up, and those he didn't, James Scowcroft was never allowed an unchallenged header.

Faced with such a dominant display from a defender how does a manager try and combat it? Simply, he tries to make sure the ball is kept away from the areas he's dominating.

George Burley isn't the first manager this season to try and isolate Wayne Bridge and his ploy was to post Scowcroft on the right of his front triple spearhead and bomb the ball out to the right flank to use his aerial power against Bridge.

Saints might have been able to cope with that, had they not fired the Smith & Wesson into their own foot.

Jim Magilton was known as The Crab during his days at The Dell because he always went sideways, but he was a crab with a sharp nip.

His first telling contribution was to drive a free-kick across the face of goal, although when a striker stabs the ball home from six yards out from a cross that never gained the altitude of a grasshopper's kneecap, questions must be asked of the defence.

If that was the starter for ten, another question was asked two minutes later with Magilton's deep corner to the back stick where Jo Tessem's confusion as to who he should be marking left Alun Armstrong free.

The third was also a sloppy goal defensively, although it hardly made any difference to the final outcome.

So was it right to bring Richards back. It certainly wasn't wrong, and although all three goals were the result of slapdash defending, you would no more blame Richards than blame Michael Fish when it pours with rain.

Never Change A Winning Team, says the old adage. But the worst time to chop and change Saints defence would be after a defeat like that at Ipswich.