THOUSANDS of football fans watching Saints win last night's south coast derby were unaware just how close the Portsmouth team came to a motorway disaster on their way to the game.

Pompey manager Harry Redknapp said his coach-load of Premiership stars had a ''miracle'' escape from a crash on the M27 which delayed the kick-off of the match at St Mary's.

The incident happened during a night of high tension which saw 16 arrests in a successful police operation and two goals from James Beattie to book Saints a place in the Carling Cup quarter-finals.

But two hours before the match the Pompey team bus was just seconds from ploughing into the wreckage of a crash at Hamble bridge on the M27.

Redknapp said: "The driver did a miracle. We were just bombing along and then the cars in front of us all smashed into each other.

"We were about to plough over the top of the lot of them, we could all see it coming, we'd have gone right over the top of the cars, there's no doubt about that.''

Fourteen vehicles were involved in three separate accidents on the bridge which caused a five-mile tailback and left six people slightly hurt.

Redknapp added: "It was very close, we were all over the place and how he swerved the coach over the road to miss them I'll never know.

"We were moving fairly quickly and had to go up the hard shoulder before we stopped 800 yards up the road.''