Saints fans have to back Nigel Adkins to get things right.
Just over a year ago the jury was very much out on Nigel Adkins, questions were being asked about his ability to manage a club like Saints after a decidely average start to his reign at St Mary's, six months later the faith in him was rewarded and Saints stormed up the league to second place and automatic promotion.
But perhaps in all the euphoria of promotion and the great start to this season perhaps it was forgotten that if last year was one in which Nigel had to make a big leap into the unknown in his managerial career, then this was is a far greater one still.
In some respects last season for Adkins was simple, of course yes he was now at a big club, far different than Scunthorpe and with much greater expectation, but the squad for promotion was already there, all he needed to do was steer it in the right direction, of course it wasnt quite as simple as that sounds, he had to do a lot of work, but in many respects Nigel could concentrate on things on the pitch and work with the best squad in League 1 bar none.
History shows that Nigel did exactly what he was brought in to do, get us up automatically, he could do no more.
The learning curve for him last season was in dealing with better quality players than he had been used too, also having the luxury of a big squad and the selection choices that brings, certainly at times he made mistakes, but he seemed to learn from them along the way, but overall he was in familiar teritory having taken Scunthorpe up from that division twice.
This season is a whole new ball game, of course he had spent a season in the Championship with Scunthorpe before, but under different circumstances altogether than he now has at Saints, back then it was working with a small squad and at best loan players like Jack Cork, he had to get the best out of them and ultimately they went down, but most would agree it wasnt the fault of the manager, merely what he had to work with.
Now he is in unfamiliar territory, the top of the Championship and with a big squad, initially the euphoria of the promotion season carried us through the early games and to the top of the league, but as many will tell you, getting to the top of a league is the easy part, staying there is the hardest and as we found out last year, its sometimes better to chase than be chased.
Nigel now finds himself in a dilemma, the blunt facts are we are on a downward slide, of course it could be said that after our great start that would always be the case, we could not hope to maintain a 100% home record, that being the case i have always maintained that our target for this season, indeed any season to get promotion would be an average of two points per game, our problem now is for a long time we havent been maintaing that.
This issnt a knee jerk reaction after two back to back defeats, this is something that has been happening for a long time, our poor away record being the first sign of problems, but the trend of the past few months is not good, short term over six games its 5 points from 6, medium term its just about acceptable 21 from 12 games, longer term its 30 from 18, so being blunt for 3/4 of the season we havent been maintaining that two points per game average, we are being totally propped up by those opening seven games where we took 18 points.
Yes of course we are still top of the league, but whilst our rivals for promotion are starting to gather momentum as we did last year, we are losing ground, we might be top now, but unless something changes immediately then we could be in trouble, defeat at Forest would almost certainly see us removed from top spot and could se us drop to fourth.
There is no doubt that something is wrong on the pitch, maybe its the team spirit, certainly when we went down to ten men at Brighton we looked beaten before Rickie Lambert had reached the dressing room, you could tell this wasnt a team about to roll up its sleeves and grind out a result, selection wise and substitutions have cost us and so have our tactics that at times are too one dimensional, some would say injuries and suspensions, I would say not, injury wise we have been quite lucky, we have a big squad we just havent utilised it as well as we should have done.
So Nigel needs to look back at last season and see what he did when we had a blip in January, what he needs to do is go back to basics again, at Brighton we complicated things too much in midfield, for whatever reasons we were already making three changes in the line up, we didnt need to confuse things further by a reshuffle in not only where people were playing in the midfield but how we were playing
Secondly we need to be shooting a lot more, the players seem to want to pass the ball right up to the goal line, last season we scored a lot of goals from outside the box, players werent scared to have a shot, this season we have rarely scored from outside the area, indeed most of our goals seem to come from dead ball situations or crosses into the box, now there is nothing wrong with this, but we do need to vary it sometimes.
Professional footballers are not comfortable with change in the main, OK at the top level they have the technical skill to adapt, but at our standard not so much, the players in our squad will want continuity as this gives them the confidence to play, certain players will feel undermined when they are constantly left out or subbed when playing well, if it aint broke then dont fix it, is a good motto to have here, but in the past two months that hasnt been applied.
But if Nigel Adkins learns his lessons well not just from this season but last as well then he is the man to take us through this dodgy period, he can get us back on the right track, get us back to winning ways and keep us in the top two, I feel he is the man for the job, why ? because he learnt his lessons last season and that saw us through then, his realtive inexperience at this level means he will have to learn along the way, but hehas shown that he can do, so wwe have to have faith in him.
Dave Merrington once said that in modern football a manager is only ever six games from the threat of the sack, whether he has been at a club for five years or just arrived, how well he is doing the job is based on his last six games, now i dont think that Nigel is under that threat, nor do i think he should be, but Merrington's analogy of the situation is a good barometer what is a blip or a crisis, Im sure that in Nigel we have the man to turn what is at the moment a blip, albeit a big one away from a crisis, but our promotion hopes lay in the next six games, if we continue our present form then automatic promotion will slip away and indeed i would worry about our chances to stay in the play off spots let alone win them, if we hit that two point ratio per game, then we are back on track and the season could be very interesting.