What's Adkins going to say after the Arsenal debacle

[loyalroyal4life]

Least we are not as shit as QPR.....or are we...

[Snowball]

I looked at the QPR bench last night and thought how many would walk into our team.

We really shouldn't have got as many points as we have got.

[Sanguine]

Or QPR should have more points than they do.

Or both, realistically.

[MouldyRoyal]

Hi.

Feel free to tell me to Oxf*rd off at your leisure.

Another Soton fan here, I'm afraid. Nigel Adkins does tend to breed a great deal of goodwill from those whose clubs he has managed, but I've lurked here for a while anyway and you do seem more intelligent than many other message boards so thought I'd just add a little to how to interpret NA's press conferences.

Firstly, you'll have picked up on his continual reinforcement of message and positivity. You'll be sick of it in about 3 weeks or so. What you do have to do is listen for other things.

1/ What he doesn't say. E.g. he didn't say in his last interview that you have a team of honest, hardworking talented individuals. My reading of that is that he thinks there aren't too many good players among those he's inherited. He did concentrate on how good Arsenal were, but only to obviously deflect attention away from his inability to say much else. Otherwise he would have.

2/ He likes a challenge and to prove people wrong so he will bust a gut not only to bring you up (I assume you and QPR are now down) and keep you up, but have you doing well. He's very proud and extremely ambitious, too.

3/ If you catch him off-guard or at the end of an interview, sometimes he'll give something away. For example, I know he'll hate how deep you defend because he's been very critical of Saints when they used to do that. It will be interesting to see how he modifies his interview style. I think he will slightly.

4/ On a personal note, is it easy to email your club? I want to interview him about something non-football related cause he's intelligent so worth listening to on that particular subject. If it is hard, I'll just go through the LMA.

5/ One of the things that might be levelled as a criticism is that he might be a bit too much of a high-level thinker (he knows his stuff) so can't necessarily communicate with the less intelligent footballer.

Bit of a mistake there m8, we're far less intelligent than other boreds.

Re 4, can't imagine you'd have much luck going through the club I'm afraid, unless it were for something charitable so if you have a contact for the LMA, I'd use that as my call.

Re 1, ooof but fair comment tbh.

[melonhead]

Or QPR should have more points than they do.

Or both, realistically.

except you dont get points awarded automatically for how good some bloke thinks your players are.
and we have exactly the number of points we deserve

[melonhead]

1/ What he doesn't say. E.g. he didn't say in his last interview that you have a team of honest, hardworking talented individuals. My reading of that is that he thinks there aren't too many good players among those he's inherited. He did concentrate on how good Arsenal were, but only to obviously deflect attention away from his inability to say much else. Otherwise he would have.

not sure how you reached that conclusion from words that he didnt say.

i mean, youd be correct, but .......

[TheSaintlee]

Hi.

Feel free to tell me to Oxf*rd off at your leisure.

Another Soton fan here, I'm afraid. Nigel Adkins does tend to breed a great deal of goodwill from those whose clubs he has managed, but I've lurked here for a while anyway and you do seem more intelligent than many other message boards so thought I'd just add a little to how to interpret NA's press conferences.

Firstly, you'll have picked up on his continual reinforcement of message and positivity. You'll be sick of it in about 3 weeks or so. What you do have to do is listen for other things.

1/ What he doesn't say. E.g. he didn't say in his last interview that you have a team of honest, hardworking talented individuals. My reading of that is that he thinks there aren't too many good players among those he's inherited. He did concentrate on how good Arsenal were, but only to obviously deflect attention away from his inability to say much else. Otherwise he would have.

2/ He likes a challenge and to prove people wrong so he will bust a gut not only to bring you up (I assume you and QPR are now down) and keep you up, but have you doing well. He's very proud and extremely ambitious, too.

3/ If you catch him off-guard or at the end of an interview, sometimes he'll give something away. For example, I know he'll hate how deep you defend because he's been very critical of Saints when they used to do that. It will be interesting to see how he modifies his interview style. I think he will slightly.

4/ On a personal note, is it easy to email your club? I want to interview him about something non-football related cause he's intelligent so worth listening to on that particular subject. If it is hard, I'll just go through the LMA.

5/ One of the things that might be levelled as a criticism is that he might be a bit too much of a high-level thinker (he knows his stuff) so can't necessarily communicate with the less intelligent footballer.

What was his budget in league 1 and the championship, and how many players did he have to buy to make you play attractive football that was effective?? In addition to that how good were Saints at passing before he came in??

when he joined us in league 1, we were already a team that was winning regularly in the 2nd half of the season before. Just won the JPT and pardew had bought in Lambert, Fonte, richardson and Puncheon. Adkins had already at the club, Lallana, Scheniderlin and Oxlade-chamberlain also

from that point onwards during his whole stay with us, he only lost Chamberlain. Everyone else were put on huge contracts in order to keep them at the club
he had the most expensive league 1 squad in history I would say.

so he had it all ready to go, his notable additions were Sharp, Cork, hooiveld and danny fox. Apart from losing chamberlain, there was no need to rebuild/replace, just add to a very good league 1/championship squad.

as you can see, he had £30m worth of players spent on the team, refused to play Boruc (which was utterly insane) and we were only a few points above you lot (gap gotten bigger since he has left)

I love nigel but it will be interesting to see how he gets on with the need to rebuild/regroup a little and deal with the expectation of immediate return to the prem

[floyd__streete]

we were only a few points above you lot (gap gotten bigger since he has left)

Which to be fair, is as much - if not more - due to our own ineptitude!

FTR, you had 22 points from 22 games when you dismissed him and that takes into accout 4 points from those first 10 games so you can't argue that NA wasn't improving on the team. You've done well since he has gone, but NA surely deserves an awful lot of credit for the 22 points he contributed (12 from 9 games since, which is very decent).

[melonhead]

anti adkins revisionism.

just like our fans who reckon brian fluked the championship

[TheSaintlee]

we were only a few points above you lot (gap gotten bigger since he has left)

Which to be fair, is as much - if not more - due to our own ineptitude!

FTR, you had 22 points from 22 games when you dismissed him and that takes into accout 4 points from those first 10 games so you can't argue that NA wasn't improving on the team. You've done well since he has gone, but NA surely deserves an awful lot of credit for the 22 points he contributed (12 from 9 games since, which is very decent).

he did well, but the team have shown in glimpses of a level that adkins never did

[Ian Royal]

Hi.

Feel free to tell me to Oxf*rd off at your leisure.

Another Soton fan here, I'm afraid. Nigel Adkins does tend to breed a great deal of goodwill from those whose clubs he has managed, but I've lurked here for a while anyway and you do seem more intelligent than many other message boards so thought I'd just add a little to how to interpret NA's press conferences.

Chuffing Nora!

I wouldn't want to read the stupid message boards you've seen.

Welcome btw.

[maffff]

Hi.

Feel free to tell me to Oxf*rd off at your leisure.

Another Soton fan here, I'm afraid. Nigel Adkins does tend to breed a great deal of goodwill from those whose clubs he has managed, but I've lurked here for a while anyway and you do seem more intelligent than many other message boards so thought I'd just add a little to how to interpret NA's press conferences.

Chuffing Nora!

I wouldn't want to read the stupid message boards you've seen.

Welcome btw.

Saintsweb (and The Ugly Inside) make some 'interesting' reading.

I imagine last season he might have perused K.U.M.B.

North Stand Chat make us look pretty balanced (talk about fickle)

Planetswans. Erm. Owlstalk. ERM.

As for Millwall......... Leeds..........

For a bunch of shitcunts we on HNA? are alright really.

[Snowball]

anti adkins revisionism.

just like our fans who reckon brian fluked the championship

I said we fluked the Championship, but I said it while it was happening, nothing "revisionist" about it,
and I also said we were AT BEST the fourth-best side in the league that season

and I added that we would struggle in the Prem and be the worst of the three promoted sides


And folks like you said the table doesn't lie.

It does, and it can. And it did.

[Maguire]

Which bit was the fluke? Going out trying to win games and winning them?

Being better than anyone else across a 46 game period?

[Vision]

anti adkins revisionism.

just like our fans who reckon brian fluked the championship

I said we fluked the Championship, but I said it while it was happening, nothing "revisionist" about it,
and I also said we were AT BEST the fourth-best side in the league that season

and I added that we would struggle in the Prem and be the worst of the three promoted sides


And folks like you said the table doesn't lie.

It does, and it can. And it did.

No it didn't.

Tables don't give points for artistic impression. Everyone plays everyone twice and the team with the most points wins and deservedly so because thats what the table is designed to measure. It doesn't lie, it can't. Unless you think someone from the league inadvertently added a few points onto our total which we didn't actually gain by winning or drawing football matches

What happened this season has no bearing on it. Different league,different teams, different players.

[Snowball]

IMO we fluked the games at Brighton, West Ham, Saints for starters
and "stole" many other games.

We were let of the hook by a few things like West Ham's home-nerves,
poor finishing and a bit of luck (like Harte's deflected free-kick at Brighton)

I can barely remember a game where I came away thinking, we hammered that lot and deserved to win

[melonhead]

Which bit was the fluke? Going out trying to win games and winning them?

Being better than anyone else across a 46 game period?

i think he means it was luck in the way we consistently used a game plan of soaking up pressure, letting teams play it around in their own halves, before knicking the ball, going up the end and scoring with most of our chances in great technical and clinical fashion.
and how we did it consistently away from home Vs our rivals at the business end of the season.

Massive fluke

[Vision]

IMO we fluked the games at Brighton, West Ham, Saints for starters
and "stole" many other games.

We were let of the hook by a few things like West Ham's home-nerves,
poor finishing and a bit of luck (like Harte's deflected free-kick at Brighton)

I can barely remember a game where I came away thinking, we hammered that lot and deserved to win

Your "opinion" doesn't come into it any more than mine does. We accumulated the most points. We deserved to be champions. End of.

[melonhead]

IMO we fluked the games at Brighton, West Ham, Saints for starters
and "stole" many other games.

We were let of the hook by a few things like West Ham's home-nerves,
poor finishing and a bit of luck (like Harte's deflected free-kick at Brighton)

I can barely remember a game where I came away thinking, we hammered that lot and deserved to win

LOL!

what are you on about

lol at west ham nerves. the nerves our players succesfully conquered due to their mental toughness, whereas west ham buckled under them?
i went to all three games. i was pretty comfortable at the saints game to be honest. their play was mostly inneffective, and we dealt with the chances they did manage. brighton game was nervy, but we soaked it up again, like a giant wall of sponge, before letting our superior qualities show yet again.

staying in games, killing games, knowing when to push and when to hold, finishing your chances are all part of the skill of playing/managing football matches. ie, thats not luck.
when united do it, its the sign of a champion. when we do it, its luck?
lol. lol at you. lol lol lol


football, no mattor how much the modern football pundit wish it was, is not a game thats just about skills and technical ability.
if it were youd simply add up the stats at the end of a season and decide the leage that way. whos team accumulated the most OPTA points wins.
mental toughness, resilience, strength, determination are all attributes of a footballer, and if a team installs players with those qualities in spadefulls, you cant call it luck when those intangible skills pay dividends over all the fancy football in the league

[Snowball]

The idea that a team can't get a run of luck, 6-8- even 10 games is stupid.

Of course they can. It's the nature of variance.

Let me give you one example this year. Away to Newcastle.

We caught them at the end of a wobble. They hammered us first half but they only got one goal.
We were left (luckily) with a chance and then ALF falling over somehow gets the ball over the line
(easily could have been disallowed for handball) then an air-shot from Akpan falls to ALF and we get a second.

LUCK.

We were played off the park by Brighton and should have lost 3-0 or worse. LUCK (their misfiring)

We have had a number of quirky scores e.g. The two goals before HT at West Ham when we should have been dead and buried before we scored




And of course, nerves (from the other side), "momentum", players playing above their expected norms, a few refereeing decisions going your way
and suddenly a run is created.


I am on record as saying AT THE TIME, during the run, that we gave away far too many chances, shots, shots on target and would be found out.