At the start of January no one would have predicted the turmoil that was going to happen during this month.
Its fair to say that most Saints fans expected a few arrivals during the month of January, what they didnt expect was most of those arrivals to be Maurricio Pochettino and his coaching staff and popular manager Nigel Adkins to be gone.
The message boards across the Saints internet world were for once all in agreement over the final months of 2012, that Saints needed to strengthen in the window, what we didnt want to see again was a repeat of the summer window where we chased virtually unknown names for big money in positions that we already had strength and depth in, what we actually got was a carbon copy of the summer window.
It was to be hoped that Saints would copy Liverpool, like us the Merseyside club had left themselves woefully short in key areas, the signing of Sturridge on virtually the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve showed they had been pro active in the weeks leading up to the transfer window opening and had identified their targets early, Saints fans hoped that Saints would be this proactive.
What we wanted was Premier quality and preferably experienced players, what we got was the same old same old of supposedly marque signings who it was quite obvious to the outsider were using Saints as leverage for either a new contract at their current club or more money in another one, whether the change of manager that was clearly done and dusted before the New Year had even been rung in was affecting our ability to attract players is another matter, Forren has already confirmed in interviews that he never met Nigel Adkins and he was indeed well aware of the incoming manager long before Nigel Adkins knew he would be sacked, how muchj this affected us will never be known, all we do know is that key areas were not addressed and it was not for the lack of trying, all be it in the wrong areas, if Nigel Adkins had been privy to these transfer dealings then as manager he would have known the areas that needed addressing, Maurricio Pochettino for all his studying of the squad would not, im sure he would now so perhaps given that we were always going to appoint him, perhaps the biggest error will turn out to be not so much sacking Nigel Adkins mid January, but not doing it in Dcember to give Pochettino time to assess the squad.
Even the player we bought in is an unknown quantity, he may turn out to be the best central defender that we ever have, but our problem is now and not next year, on Saturday at least one of the goals was down to a total lack of concentration in central defence giving their man a free header, would a new central defender have not caught out like that, of course football is all ifs and buts, but 8 years ago this very week Saints conceded a sloppy late goal against Everton at home in a 2-2 draw, if we hadnt let that in then we wouldnt have gone down.
That blast from the past shows that in the Premier the margin for error is very very fine, as it stands our new signing hasnt played in over two months and by his own admission is only at 80% fitness and not ready to play in the Premier, this is nearly three weeks after he signed, if he doesnt play against City then he will have been on the books over five weeks before he gets his chance to play and in that time we will have played four games, we have conceded sloppy goals in two of the three played so far, how many would a couple of good signings prevented ?
If we werent hanging on to sack Nigel Adkins we would probably have been able to get Forren in a fortnight earlier than we did, surely 3-4 weeks training would have seen him match fit.
So perhaps the conclusion after yet another disapointing transfer window is that if Nigel Adkins was going to be sacked and from the comments from both Vegard Forren and Maurricio Pochettino he clearly was lined up for the bullet long before he got it, then doing it in the middle of the transfer window was not the time to do it, if he had stayed for another two weeks then perhaps we would have made a couple of decent signings who would already been in the side, but conversly if we had done it two weeks earlier then it gave us the chancefor the new man to perhaps identify the areas that he needed and the targets etc and more to the point in either case the manager could have been involved in the transfer process in speaking to the player, after all money is discussed by agents but what really convinces a player is what plans the manager has for him, instead we had to sneak around whispering to players about a potential new manager, trying not to let it sneak out.
I have high hopes for our new manager, I think it was wrong that Nigel Adkins was sacked, I still think had he been allowed to continue and more importantly been involved in the transfer process we might just have a couple of more points than e currently have and that could prove crucial, however Im not going to dismiss Pochettino just because he isnt Adkins, so far he seems to know what he is doing tactically and is getting the team playing a high tempo game, however I worry that he hasnt got the right tools to work with squad wise and what matter is chasing 17th place this season and not sixth next