http://georgeweahscousin.com/2013/01/18/mauricio-pochettino-the-man-with-a-plan/

Well right out of the left field to quote. I can't say I agree and feel NA has been treated shamefully. Apart from the fact he encouraged attacking football NA was different from our recent managers and virtually every other current manager in football. He was in my opinion loyal, hardworking,honest and fairminded pretty good personality traits.

I was one of the dozen season ticket holders picked at random who had dinner with NC in Nov 2011. I came away with the impression NC was totally single minded in his aim which was to win the Premiership with 50% of the players in the team from the Academy. If he gives an interview in the near future (unlikely) he wuill re-iterate this aim and I'm sure stae and firmly believe we are on course to achieve this.

Football as a cliche goes " is now big business" so the sacking is just that a business decision. NC gets a terrible press because he does not feel he should or need to explain a business decision. It is strange really when Fergie falls out with a player (Beckham, Stam etc) that is a business decision, the irony being he generally gets praised for it and the press explain that is what makes him so successful.

That's the reality as I see it, however that doesn't make it right, this time the end doesn't justify the means. Nigel desrved and had earned a great deal better, a great great great deal better.

Am in total shock that the club that I have been honoured to support for the last 20 years has sacked manager Nigel Adkins and in such an underhand manner. Obviously this had been decided on some time ago as they announce the new manager the day they sack Adkins. Shame on you Cortese! I am for the first time ashamed to be associated with Southampton Football Club.

Nigel thank you from taking us from Div1 up to 15th in the Premiership in such a short space of time. You should have been treated better than this. I hope you realise the the majority of Saints fans wish you were still at Saint Marys. As far as I and a lot of the fans are concerned you will always be a Saints legend. Thank you Nigel.

Come on you Saints on Monday - do it for Nigel!!!!

I echo the comments of thanks to Nigel Adkins. At times I have questionned tactics and substitutions and a couple of months ago we were in a poor position. We have recently found some form and a more consistent formation which competes in most areas. The team has performed significantly better in recent league games and the outlook was pretty positive. I echo some sentiments above that the poor start and poor preparation/questionnable summer transfers may not have all been NA's doing.

Ulimtately we have lost a good man and a man who seemed to understand how much football means to the fans - he always praised the supporters and it is right that the supporters of our (and other) clubs are praising and are sad for him.

I want us to be successful and to win on Monday but I also want the club to behave with integrity - I want to be proud of the club, and that is only partialy related to results on the pitch. I do not want to hear of the leadership of our club as a 'project' any more. Projects are temporary! I would like to hear words like commitment, honour, growth and stability ongoing.

Can't believe the drivel being spouted here and elsewhere, worrying about good will from neutral supporters, listening to ex pros with chips on their shoulders and axes to grind have to say. so much lazy journalism out there too.
Best win ratio, yup in the championship and league one, not the future, we're 21 pt from 21 games and that could have been 21 from 23 quite easily.
Maybe Cortese should have fired him after ten with no replacement, would that have made people happy? He waited for the right man (hopefully) and will move the club forward. We are in a religation battle and everyone wants to keep the manager, why do we have to wait until we are in deep shit before we make the change.
Nigel seems a nice bloke, did well to a point now it's time to leave. He was caught out a bit, it's a real shame as in a perfect world he'd be taking us into Europe but it wasn't to be. It's football.

Great post frm London Saint yesterday that almost carbon copied my thoughts....
Surprised at the timing of this decision when it is so important to still be in the EPL come May, not sure how being back in the championship works in the "long term plan"
A lot of positives about MP on the tv and radio yesterday, esp Guihem Ballague on SSN, and I hope he does bring his talents to the squad from day one.
Also, cant believe some of the comments about hoping we get relegated now.....esp Paul Merson on SSN, what a statement to make wrt the players and fans from a so called Ex-Professional....classless!!!!!
Would like to say a massive Thank You to NA for the last few seasons, I have to be honest and say I was never 100% behind him, esp on some team selections and tactics, BUT he did get results, and APR 28th 2012 will always be up there as an amazing and emotional day......Good luck Nigel.

Paul Merson is a Kn#b,Never has a good word to say about us being an ex skate.As he said yesterday on Sky 'hes a Portsmouth Man'-Dont see him putting his hand in his pocket lately.Unfortunately the media will be all over this. We get very little coverage when we are doing well and if we do its usually patronising.

I want to commend Singapore Saint for his extremely well chosen words and sentiments about this whole dreadful mess. You last para was absolutely true

Some thoughts going forward, but also looking back a bit:-
* ashamed seems to be the overwhelmingly common denominator amongst fans
* we must support the new manager until his approach gives us serious cause to doubt him, although I am not impressed by his credentials at this juncture
* I don't wish to indulge in conspiracy theory but it may be possible that NC a) took on Pardew as the best man available to stop the slide towards the bottom of the leagues and got rid of him as soon as he had some doubts (after only three games or so if I remember rightly) because Pardew seemed to have lost the dressingroom's support b) took on Adkins as a bright young manager recognised for achievements in the lower leagues and his man management qualities, but crucially only saw him as likely to take Saints so far c) NA 'over achieves' (to everyone's surprise and satisfaction) and NC decides months ago that he needs someone to take them even further because NA has insufficient top level experience and Cortese has no patience for him to get that experience, but feels unable to remove NA over the summer (for obvious reasons)so d) surprise, surprise Nigel struggles a bit but, by and large, keeps the fans with him (personal fan support levels of 80% or more would be beyond the dreams of any politician others than those in N. Korea). The trouble with this theory is that you would have expected NC to appoint a 'leading' manager with a substantial track record instead of a possibly promising individual with an unimpressive track record in management, no Premiership experience, no English in an environment in which the poor guy starts with negligible empathy with the 'ashamed' supporters.
* I've argued that NC has been steadily interfering in team affairs and reducing NA to a senior coaching role. Take for instance the acquisition of Gaston Ramires (who I think is a real quality player but needs some time to adapt to the demands of the Prem), I don't believe NA had any say in this signing, this was a Cortese project (NC 'thinking big' about the future and spending large sums of money for a player who I would have thought was an obvious luxury when we more obviously needed to bolster the defence with better quality players. Who I wonder advises NC in these decisions?
*expect the appointment of a Director of Football sooner or later (that seems to work on the continent but not so well in an English culture)
*perhaps we will have some more expensive signings to help the new manager who probably won't have much input either, I wonder if we can really afford this given the amounts of money already spent and in some cases wasted?
* yes, I would rather we stayed up than went down, nothing that has happened this week seems to me to have made that more likely (apart from a potentially good signing at CB)but I would rather we had retained our dignity, honesty, decency, stability and goodwill even if that had meant going down under Adkins which was by no means certain and was partly caused by mistaken transfer policies that he had little responsibility for.

I am still just so pissed off .... I support a football club ..... we were together as one

Objectively - even with NA we had a 1st team coach rather than a manager .... with that structure that means we could have changed coaching team without firing NA if we needed ..... I though we had a Director of football who oversaw youth system .. and don't we have a bunch of ex-youth players. I also thought NC oversaw transfers ........

My response to Simmo70 is that we all rely on goodwill to have a culture that permits errors and mistakes. NC has just removed that net ........... If we don't improve with our new man the club will go back to the days of RL. It will get ugly.

You ignore the views of fans at your peril ...... We were enjoying being saints fans again and he ignored us and fired someone we respected ..... without explaining it in a way that makes sense other than "I just wanted to". Well that wont do for me

Now I am pissed off all over again

So NC, I think we as supporters are owed an explanation..... ........ and soon

Like everyone I am shocked and particularly disgusted that the new manager was announced it seems before Adkins knew. That is appalling by the Club.

I would like to sincerely add my thanks to Nigel Adkins for reviving our Club and for all his hard work. Very sorry to see him go and I wish you Nigel all best wishes for the future. I am sure you will find another job with a good Championship club at least. Thank you Nigel - you have always been a gentleman.

Excellent post SingaporeSaint. It is definitely time the management of our club stopped referring to us a project and started to understand the fans, the history, the tradition that makes us who we are.

All this said, we have to make best of what we have now and, by many accounts, the new manager is a man who has the respect of some good judges in the game. Creating a poisonous atmosphere on Monday night will not help us in the long term. Adkins deserves recognition for bringing us back to the big time and he will get that prior to kick off but once the game is under way, let's focus our energy on getting behind the team. Today's results have given a real chance of creating breathing space between us and the relegation places so let's not allow this opportunity to pass us by. Everton are a very good team and we need to make a 12th man if we possibly can...

Come on you Saints!!!!

Since hearing the news about Adkins, i decided to take some time before voicing my opinion and allow the news to settle in and if anything, try to take a view without sentiment or emotional bias.

My first reaction was of complete shock, i actually felt physically sick.....like i had just been cheated on. I couldn’t understand why our chairman would make this decision given that we had just seen two back to back promotions and were starting o climb the table.

I then took a moment to look at it from a negative view. This being that we are only 3 points clear of relegation. Some would say this is an achievement and we are 15th, others would say we are 3points out of relegation and with a tough run coming up, more than likely will be back in it soon.

Depending on how you spin it, it could be seen as a good season or bad season so far.

I then started to look at the replacement. This i found confusing....as he seems to have a very good reputation without achieving anything??
This could mean that he was helping a club punch above its weight or managed them through difficult times/limited resources, etc.

A few of the comments he has made i found even more confusing...
He said that he wants the mentality where they can win all the games that are ahead of us.

These two philosophies are exactly what adkins was bringing to the club. He constantly talked about changing mentality and getting the players to believe they can win every game. He also approached every game with a view to winning it....sometimes meaning we lost but still he maintained this approach
He also states that he likes to play dynamic, pressure football with an attacking nature that the fans can be proud of watching their team.

In terms of style, this is exactly what adkins was trying to instill and you could see he based his game on possession, and pressing further up the pitch...
He also mentions that he thinks saints need to improve defensively. No sh*t ! Adkins knows this and i think it’s clear who does the transfers now so this can’t be blamed on Adkins.

With two of the best full backs in the country i think we are centre back or two away from a top 10 club...maybe throw a winger in but we are not far off.

It maybe that adkins wasnt a big enough managerial name to get some big signings over the line...maybe this is what potential targets were saying to the chairman.

All in all, we have a new manager and we have to accept it. It maybe that MC is going to take us to the next level and maybe one day the dream of champions league football will be a reality.

However, what i keep coming back to is the foundations this club was built on and how adkins embellished everything the club and fans stood for. The best thing was that we had achieved so much and were finally in the premier league, playing great football.....but doing it the right way. The difference between ourselves and QPR was evident and i almost felt smug that we had players we nurtured, players who stuck by us and we stuck by them and a manager who we backed 100%

One of my proudest moments was singing adkins name when he became increasingly under pressure during our tough start.

How much sweeter would it have been to have gone to that next level with adkins....with our young players...with the core of our team, adam, morgan, cork, ricky, etc
Showing that a blank cheque is not the only way to get success.

I may not feel the same if we do improve, and it will prove to myself that im just as fickle as the majority of fans in football these days.

However, right now, i feel that we will splash the cash, we will get some new signings and are likely to climb to the table........ but i will get half the satisfaction knowing that we didn’t do it with adkins.

If i had his address i would write him a letter...but i dont.
So all i can say is thank you for the memories, some of the best football we have played, the fake tan, the red tie and after match interviews.
Good luck in what you do and don’t forget us. I hope one day you will return as you will always get our backing.

Saints Fan

I am a supporter of NA he has given me three seasons of sheer pleasure BUT in the premiership he has been found wanting. Some of his team selections , his transfers over the last two years if he had anything to do with them have been suspect. We all knew we needed to tighten the central defence at the end of last year but it has not been done. If you take the Spanish radio comments the new guy seems a very intelligent forward thinking manager that suffered the same fate as Lambert at Aston V and lost his good players to transfers but walked didnot get the sack!! We all need to get behind him and the team don't let it get toxic like Chelsea otherwise we will be doomed. NA could not attract the right type of player this guy will be able to. Although I don't like the way he trades I trust Cortese as he has saved us and invested in us and look we're we are we could have been like Pompey so to have a ruthless MD might be what is needed in the premiership for the little teams to survive.