Adkins Sacking - Nature of The Beast

Nigel Adkins.

Once upon a time you had the Brian Clough's, Bill Shankley's, and Ron Atkinson's. Men who would walk through the door of a new club and never leave without an almighty fight. Men who demanded respect and in due time got it. Nobody has any respect anymore.

 

 Make no mistake Nigel Adkins will be at watching the game this evening absolutely seething. Most managers feel relieved when their called into the chairman's office and given the boot after a dreadful campaign. There was a sense that Paul Jewell might have had a heart attack had he remained managing Ipswich for a week longer. But Adkins has been treated badly.

 

Nicola Cortese, a man with his own vision.

I won’t go as far as to say I want Southampton to now go down, because players like Rickie Lambert have been terrific this season. But I have no desire to see Pochettino succeed. His record is average at best and we've seen already with Juande Ramos at Tottenham and Fabio Capello managing England that a manger with very limited English is a recipe for disaster. What's aggravating is that it was an English manager on the end of a brutal dismissal and Nicola Cortese, the Saints chairman, had no intentions of replacing Adkins with another home bred manager.

 

Pochettino can go one of two ways. He can stick with the current crop of players who appear good enough to stay up, or shake things up considerably. The young talent of Jack Cork, Nathaniel Clyne and Luke Shaw have benefited from a manager willing to blood youngsters in crucial fixtures, a brave decision which has worked brilliantly. It would be a shame to see say Pochettino bring a left back in from Espanyol and a striker likely to fit his philosophy more so than Rickie Lambert.

 

Bill Kenwright, a shining example who has Everton's best interests at heart.

 

Southampton have not beaten Everton in their last six Premier League meetings and whilst Everton have won only twice in 13 attempts in the Premier League at Southampton, the subdued atmosphere and drop in team morale could pave the way for a easy three points for the Toffees. Bill Kenwright epitomizes the type of chairman which have become a rare commodity in England. His patience and trust in David Moyes has seen steady growth and Everton now pose a genuine threat in the fight for fourth place. Cortese wants Southampton to be in Europe within the next two years or so, but his approach threatens to derail a side who were on the up.

 

The problems with a foreign chairman begin to emerge when teams make it to the promised land. The fans and the squad are all pulling in the right direction when the new chairman spends millions of pounds on transfers, a quick solution to reaching the summit of the Championship. But these foreign chairman expect to see rapid growth immediately once their team enters the Premier League. Neil Warnock was unfortunate to be dismissed at QPR and they were lucky to survive the season. If the ambitiously ran Leicester or recently bought Nottingham Forest gained promotion the likes of Nigel Pearson and Alex McLeish would know that talk of a mid-table finish is expected rather than a dogfight to survive.

 

Mike Ashley, don't expect his friendship with Pardew to last.

 

Most worrying is the perception that chairman who don’t rate the manager in charge when they arrive are making no effort to build bridges or give them their chance. Mike Ashley never really wanted Chris Hughton and saw him as a stopgap. The same can be said for Sean O' Driscoll at Nottingham Forest. Foreign investment is now being perceived with a level of suspicion because fans cannot tell if these buyers have the clubs best interest at heart. In the case of Southampton, such an unjustified sacking brings this question to the forefront of footballing issues once more.