If Saints are to genuinely challenge for promotion then it will be down to Nigel Adkins.
Some will say this is an obvious statement, but if you think about it carefully its perhaps not as obvious as you might think, a manager can be good at signing players but not so good at getting them to play to their full potential, likewise a good team will still win games under a bad manager but perhaps not quite as many as they should do.
In the summer before the transfer window got into full swing I felt then that in terms of quantity and quality Saints had as good a squad as most teams in the division and what would be key would be Nigel Adkins, key in two areas, firstly how he identified weknesses in the side and used the tranfer market to deal with them and secondly how he got the team playing.
Lying joint top in the table has to give the impression that its so far so good on oth accounts and i would not argue too much with that.
But if Saints are to really push on and challenge for promotion, then the real work begins now, I have always been in the camp that has said that selling AOC for a big fee would be more beneficial to a promotion push if the monies recieved are used well, than keeping the player, now we are bout to find out.
Nige Adkins now has to show that he can bring in the right players to plug the weak spots.
This squad is good enough to win more games than it loses in the Championship, of that there is no doubt, but if we want to challenge then we have to cut out the silly dropped points that were a feature of last season and indeed when we reached the Championship play offs five season ago, Adkins job is now to pinpoint where we might be vunerable and bring in better players.
An example that he is on the right track is the aquisition of Danny Fox, Harding has a few fans who think that he is a quality defender, its well documented that I am not one of those and i dont intend to open up this debate now, but clearly the manager had seen the same weaknesses that i had in Harding, he also felt that Dickson was not the answer and he has acted quickly to deal with the situation and brought in a player who he feels will be better than either of them.
Now he has some money to spend it will be interesting to see if he can continue to improve the team, by that I mean that any manager can spot a bad player and replace him, but the really good ones are able to spo those who on th face of it look adequate but in reality have flaws in their game that can cost a team dearly and this is now going to be the real key between us languishing in mid table or putting in a genuine promotion bid.
I feel that if we are to be genuine challengers then Adkins has to improve three key areas, Goalkeeper, Central Defence and up front.
Goalkeeper. I am loathe to speak ill of Davis at the moment as he has played well so far, but the last five minutes at Barnsley reminded me very much of our last spell in the Championship and thenumber of late goals conceded. At Barnsley it was more luck than judgement that we took all three points and all down to the last five minutes or so, all Barnsley did was sling the ball into the box and we failed to deal with it, we all know that dealng with crosses is Kelvin's achilles heel and if we are to keep winning games and not throwing points away then this has to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
Of course this will be harsh on Kelvin, but fact of the matter is we have the money to deal with a problem, this is football harsh decisions have to be made.
Central Defence. Im not quite sure that Seabourne or Martin are the answer, despite both turning in decent performances in the two league games, whilst we could soldier on with either of them it could backfire on us, again its harsh on them, but if we buy an oven ready centre half then the points it might save us could prove vital at the end of the season.
Up Front. My worry is that we seem to be looking at forwards similar to both Connolly and Barnard, Mackail Smith etc all are in the same mould, what we need is a true big man striker to back up Lambert and put some pressure on him for his place, Lambert gets a lot of goals thats for sure, but a big proportion are penalties or free kicks, of course thats not all he has, but sometimes games pass him by and we need to be able to make a change in this area when that happens. This perhaps emphasises the points i am making, the hardest job of a manager isnt to replace the lesser players, but to improve the positions where its less obvious.
This is not a rant at the players mentioned or even to suggest they are playing badly, because they arent, but its pointing out that every team can be improved and its the good managers who can spot the problems and deal with them, even when it might not be what the supporters think.
We are well catered for in every position at the moment as was shown with the side we put out against Torquay, its very hard to see how we can improve most position, that is why Nigel Adkins will be the key, if he can spot the key weaknesses now wilst we cn still spend money, then it might just be the difference come the final points tally in May.