Football: Speedie gives Leicester a high-rise feeling: Phil Shaw witnesses an itinerant forager take his team to the top in a 3-0 destruction of Southend

A NEW, high-rise stand has shot up at Filbert Street, dwarfing the rest of the stadium. David Speedie may be one of the game's more vertically challenged strikers, but his part in Leicester's pursuit of the Premiership grail is starting to assume similar proportions.

In a match where the First Division's meanest defence resisted its leading scorers with embarrassing ease, Southend's solitary achievement was preventing Speedie from taking his goal tally into double figures. This was scant consolation to Barry Fry, who was, to put it euphemistically, inconsolable.

This Ron Knee from Barnet-on- Sea was quoted in the programme as saying he would 'kill for a player like David Speedie'. After watching the waspish Scot set up a first League goal since August for Julian Joachim and harass Gary Poole into the trip which conceded the clinching third, Fry announced that he felt 'like hanging myself'.

The Southend manager was 'ashamed' of his side. Speedie's performance had to be evaluated within that context. 'He's a handful at the best of times,' he said, launching into a mime of a dithering defender, 'but give him 20 yards like we did and he'll destroy you.

'We were a bloody disgrace. Leicester had to reorganise with two subs early on, so we'll never have a better chance to give 'em a game. . . I've got quality players you wouldn't have given threepence for today.'

Speedie did not even cost Brian Little that much last summer. Nominally on Southampton's payroll, he lived in the Midlands, was available on a 'free' and had been over the promotion course a year earlier. Therein lay the snag, for Leicester's fans if not the manager: it was Speedie who won the disputed spot-kick at Wembley which took Blackburn up at their expense.

They must have been the only crowd in England to cheer another defeat for Swindon - who also beat Leicester by a penalty in this year's play-off final - but Speedie appears close to absolution. Deservedly so: with his facility for linking with midfield, turning defenders, laying off weighted passes in tight spaces and outjumping tall opponents, he was even more animated than Fry.

Football was becoming fun again, he had explained in a refreshingly honest lunchtime radio interview, and after 11 clubs Leicester might even prove his spiritual home. Some things do not change, however, the game reaching a Speedie conclusion of a familiar kind after the final whistle as he squared up to two Southend players.

Heavier grounds may be one problem for Leicester and their lightweight attacking duo this winter; keeping one of their most influential players free from suspension another.

Goals: Joachim (9) 1-0; Oldfield (45) 2-0; Thompson pen (77) 3-0.

Leicester City (4-4-2): Ward; Grayson, Carey, Hill, Whitlow; Mills, Thompson, Agnew (Oldfield, 23), Ormondroyd (Gibson, 19); Speedie, Joachim. Substitute not used: Poole (gk).

Southend United (4-3-3): Sansome; Poole, Edwards, Bressington (G Jones, h/t), Powell; Hunt, K Jones, Payne; Mooney (Gridelet, 61), Angell, Otto. Substitute not used: Royce (gk).

Referee: K Cooper (Swindon).