Several people have expressed concern at the winless trip to Switzerland.

Its harsh on Saints to take them to task over the trip to Switzerland for two what were effectively training games, with three weeks to go to the season opener, Nigel Adkins made it quite clear that in hsi pre season preparation planning he was more concerened about the players getting a feel for the ball than winning meaningless games.

As the pre season programme intensifies he will of course be looking for a bit more from his team, but for the moment at least, its about everyone getting a game with the emphasis on improving fitness and no one picking up injuries.

The coming fortnight will be interesting in that we will start to see Adkins at work and how he addresses the rest of his pre season programme, some managers like to see the intensity of pre season games cranked up to a peak level just before the season proper gets underway and others prefer to keep it relatively low key right up to the opener, we will soon see how Adkins likes his pre season to pan out.

From a supporters point of view, they like to see results, of course they know the games are meaningless, but they see it as a guage as to the strength of the squad, from this point of view the Memorial Tournament is probably a week too soon, although you would hope that Saints would be stepping up a notch, but it will still be nowhere near full throttle, in fact from this point of view perhaps the structure of the tournament will work against Saints, with two 45 mins against different sides there are too mant varying factors to call, including how both the Spanish & German sides each treat it themselves.

A better guage will perhaps be the Yeovil game, I expect the West brom game to be a little low key in thet the Baggies are at a different point in their preparation than Saints and wont be looking for too much intesity at this stage, but when Saints go to Huish Park it will be a game between two sides both a week away from the season, Yeovil themselves dont have a big squad and will be perhaps a bigger test than any of the other games due to the fact that there is only a week to go.

In fact this game will answer a big question as to how Nigel Adkins works, will he play basically hsi first team with just a few substitutions or will he again switch around a lot and perhaps though not using two different teams, multiple substitutions.      

At this stage of the season as well its not uncommon for at least one closed doors friendly and this would be the one taken most seriously by players and management. 

But back to the original point, at this stage there is absolutely nothing to be drawn from the two games in Switzerland, the next game that will actually count is the Leeds one, lets leave it till then.

Photo: Action Images

Saintpaul120 added 10:17 - Jul 18 Agreed! Agree about this coming fortnight too. Will be very interesting to see who comes in ands how they might augment or compliment the current squad. Looking forward to the Markus Liebherr memorial trophy too but that's perhaps a sore subject with some.
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BITTERNEBOY added 10:40 - Jul 18 We need to have a winning culture so just because it is Pre-Season is not acceptable If it does not matter why bother to keep the score.
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SaintNick added 11:01 - Jul 18 I can see your point about a winnng culture, its certainly something that the likes of man Utd etc like to build on, but perhaps that isnt the way Adkins opeerates
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theallseeingeye added 15:31 - Jul 18 No player (or fan) wants to lose any game, ever. However, we have no idea what the manager is saying to the team, what he wants from these games and what confidence is like. Don't know about you, but I get pi55ed off if I lose a kick about on the beach. All the changes would indicate that the manager is looking for something from his players nd the results are completely unimportant, that said, I'd be worried if we lost every game from here on until the start of the season. One big win and everything will be lovely.

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