GRZEGORZ Rasiak has called on Saints fans to give himself and new strike partner Peter Madsen "a little time" to gel.

Neither striker, who played together for the first time in Saints' 2-0 loss at Reading last Friday, has scored a league goal this season.

Madsen had not scored for Cologne, who he signed for from Bochum last summer, before his loan switch to St Mary's last month.

And after an unhappy, and goalless, time at Spurs Rasiak knows he needs to start hitting the net if he wants to make his country's World Cup squad.

"Peter Madsen is a very good striker," said Rasiak. He played very well in the Bundesliga and the national team.

"I think we need to spend some time -- we have only had two training sessions. Peter had been at Southampton for maybe ten days so we need a little time find out the attributes."

Rasiak went closest to scoring for Saints at the Majeski, firing wide in the first half. He said: "I had good chances and needed to score but I didn't score. Otherwise things were good.

"There were positives because we had a few chances in the first half and if we could have scored maybe the second half would have been different.

"We will improve, we need a little time and we have a lot of new players.

"So I believe we will be good."

Saints are desperate for goals, having scored just four times in Burley's 10 Championship games in charge and just once in their last six league outings.

But apart from his record at White Hart Lane - where he failed to net in nine league and cup games - Rasiak, 27, has spent the last few years showing he, for one, knows where the goal is.

Rasiak struck 16 times in 35 Championship starts for George Burley at Derby last season after a free transfer signing from Italians Siena. The player had joined the Serie A side from Polish club Groclin, but a mistake over his registration left him a free agent.

Though hardly known to English fans - he had played for Groclin at Manchester City in the UEFA Cup in 2003 - he was a smash hit at Pride Park as Burley's Rams claimed a suprise play-off slot.

Spurs snapped him up for £2m on the final day of last summer's transfer window, making their first contact with the Rams just five hours before the midnight deadline ran out.

Saints' new goalscoring hope had played the first six games of 2005/06 for Derby, scoring twice.

Rasiak had spent three good years with Groclin after moving from Poles Odra Wodzislaw in the summer of 2001.

He had sprung to Groclin's attention by scoring nine goals in Poland's top flight for Odra in 2000/01.

He improved that to 14 goals in 26 games for Groclin in 2001/02, followed by 10 in 22 games in 2002/03 and 10 in just 18 starts in 2003/04.

Rasiak has won 25 international caps for his country and scored six goals - including two in a friendly against Israel last autumn. But he faces a tough time to get into coach Pawel Janas' World Cup starting XI for the games against Portugal, Serbia, Belgium and Finland.

Ahead of him in the reckoning are definitely Celtic's Maciej Zurawski, who bagged eight World Cup qualifying goals, and Wolves new boy Tomasz Frankowski.

Frankowski belted nine World Cup qualifying goals, including three against Azerbaijan in an 8-0 win, two in a 3-2 success against Serbia - Rasiak netted the other - and the consolation in his country's 2-1 loss at Old Trafford last October.

Andrzej Niedzielan, of Dutch club NEC, and Grzegorz Piechna, the most highly-rated striker still playing in the Polish league with Korona Kielce, are also in contention for a World Cup strike spot.

Pompey striker Emmanuel Olisadebe and Marek Saganowski, who Burley was linked with at Hearts boss, could also be vying with Rasiak for a bench place.