Adkins minority exposes fickleness of football fans

Recently after the 6-1 drubbing of Southampton by Arsenal, I heard some bizarre criticisms begin to be levelled at Southampton.  Claims that the side had been promoted a season too early and that, although the Saints couldn’t buy players because the transfer window had passed, the club could still get rid of Nigel Adkins, their manager.  I have a few issues with this that I will now address.

Promoted a season too early?  Sorry?  So when Southampton were flirting between either winning the league or going through the torment of the play-offs Southampton fans were sat in a depression because they so definitely wanted them to go up next season.  Of course not, they were over the moon to regain Premiership status.  You can’t seriously want to miss out on promotion, as a fan, it’s impossible.

Secondly, anyone who believes Southampton haven’t brought in enough new players of a certain quality, only have to look at their spending this summer to realise this isn’t the case.  Southampton bought eight players in the summer spending just over a massive £33 million pounds in the process.  This puts the Premier League new boys in the top ten biggest spenders in Europe.

Finally, to get rid of Nigel Adkins now would be ludicrous and I hope yesterdays comfortable win against Villa has put these rumours to bed.  When I heard the radio caller saying Adkins out, I thought he was crazy but since then I have seen numerous sites suggesting he is under pressure, some even suggesting replacements.

Nigel Adkins has been a hero for the south coast club bringing them back from the brink in League 1.  He spearheaded back-to-back promotions, which is an almighty achievement.  His first four games saw him narrowly beaten by Man City and Man United, scoring four goals in the process.  Sure, they lost their first four games and perhaps a 2-0 home defeat to Wigan is disappointing, but most teams would be happy to lose to the other three teams Southampton were unfortunate to start their season meeting.

Adkins side comfortably came from a goal behind to beat Paul Lambert’s Villa 4-1.  His team are outside the relegation places and have three of their hardest games out of the way.  If as fans we want to be taken seriously, rash claims like these can’t be thrown around.

Tom DiMaio

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Comments

[Paul]

Nice to see sanity in a article. Clearly anyone who has been calling for Adkins to be sacked is not really intelligent enough football wise to be allowed to voice a opinion! Ok if things are going badly for most of the season I could see why a club would want to bring in a new face to get things going, although this tends to have little effect other then to win the first game incharge for the new gaffer and then carry on as normal.
Adkins needs and will get the time for this fairly new team to gel and then the doom mongers will melt into the back ground and wait until there acid tongues have another chance to spit unsupported venom

[Adam]

I think its safe to say that those calling for adkins to be sacked were a minority, yesterday we were singing one nigel adkins before the match, whilst we were 1-0 down and then again 4-1 up.

A lot of these rumours were just created by the media because they have no real, credible stories to tell.

would love to hear where you heard these fans calling for him to be sacked as everyone i've spoken to have said they dont want him to go!!

[Tom]

Talk sport, then again, not the best source of information. Nevertheless he was a Southampton fan, the minority make a bigger impact than they perhaps should

[Rich]

Totally agree with the sentiments of the article although this story got much greater prominence in the media than it deserved. I don't know where these things start but it wasn't genuine Saints fans, no-one I know has a bad word against Adkins. What sort of fan would want their manager out after two successive promotions, unfortunately phone-ins mean any idiot can have a voice and this seems to have snowballed somehow.

[saint dele]

After a hard start saints are up and running. Not in the relegation places and inspired with ramirez and lalana showing flair and panash in the midfield, add to that lambert and the qualities of our front line and you can start to ask yourself what are our ambitions at our mighty saints this season. People start saying if saints will survive they have to look at our ricky but we are not in anyway a one man team. Another thing that all these mud slingers and opinionated suportters of other football teams need to realize is they still have to play these teams later and look at the possibility of droping points thierselves. We gave both united and city a run for thier money and honestly could have taken points from both of these teams if not for shiping goals that shouldn't have been in our net. We have rectified this situation through steping up gazzaniga and bringing in artur borac giving both experience and competition for places. We have an amaizing acadamy that is the envy of many premier league teams and we have invested heavily over the summer. We showed with the 4- 1 beating of aston Villa that we are now gelled and our gelling as a unit.
So Adkins favorite for the sack is a lack of respect and to some people maybe some jealousy of our achievementas a club over this last few years.
And one more thing apart from playing the big boys you too still have to play us as well and this is my informed opinion which i give back to you after the ones you have been constantly giving us.
I love my saints