I have completely missed the Hollaway point not sure what you mean by that. (if your comparing our situation now with Blackpools when they were in the prem then i don't see the similarity, its completly different trying to finish top 4 in the prem for a small club than it is for a large club in the championship trying to finish in the top 6. Tell me what you think i am suggesting cause i think you might have got me wrong.
Ah yes, good shout, but I think with that being the only citation you can make it seems a little unfair that his signing was due to us having Alan Pardew. Also you may consider the fact that players dropping from Championship relegation scrappers in financial trouble to a promotion favoured League One team is not the same as dropping from the Premiership to the Championship.
I don't know palace at the time were a decent championship side with some good players dropping to a leagu 1 side starting on minus 10 points is a big decision i'm not convinced with Adkins transfer history that he could of pulled it off
So for Nigel to be considered successful in the transfer market you would expect him to be pulling Premiership players into the team? I'm just curious because to me that sounds a little nuts, maybe I'm misunderstanding. A team newly promoted to the Championship signing Premiership players? Heck, freshly relegated teams struggle to keep their own guys.
The recent poor run is all down to confidence imo. The reason we started so well this season was because we had a settled team who were used to winning games and there really isn't much difference in the strongest 11's of aout 20 of the teams in this division, it all comes down to confidence and that "winning mentality". We had this at the start of the season and now it has gone due to the recent poor run, I believe if we can turn it around and win a couple of games then we can get back in with a chance of auto's or maybe winning the play offs. Unfortunately I think there is just as much chance of us not doing this and fading away and finishing about 8th, which is still higher than where I thought we would finish this year, but after the start we had I can't see how anyone could say it wouldn't be massively dissapointing.
Start of the season i honestly thought we should be aiming for promotion i infact started a thread having a pop at all the saints fans on here, ( seems i do that alot) asking why they were being negative and happy to settle for midtable. We are pretty much where i hoped we would be and this has surprised me cause i thought we needed to strenthen to achieve this so i stand corrected on that point. I am disapointed with the last 2 and a half months and worried that performances don't seem to have changed in this time. I am still hopeful for a top 2 finish but Adkins toturn things around and quick to do this. i'm pretty sure 2 months of bad results is not a blip its come to be the norm which worries me.
DTLW posted on another thread a screenshot of Wolves' results when they won the title. Over the same period they took 11 out of a possible 39 points. If we continue at this rate until the end of the season I'd be very surprised. Then we can start talking serious problems!
i just saw that, gives us all hope for brighter things, annoys me a tad that people keep calling it our recent bad run its been going on for over 2 months now thats alot of games to have a recent bad run.
I am pretty much bang in the middle of the two poles. My approach is I think going to be to give myself a break from this forum, as analysing every game, and every player, and opposition form etc. really just builds expectations. I read what I want into everything, and any connection to logical though disappears slightly. I hail the positive thinkers, of course, until the match has been played and we lose again, and then I tend to get completely demoralised. The enjoy-it-while-we're-second group we discuss does also annoy me - you cannot honestly tell me that if you had pre-season expectations of finishing 10-14th, that you would be making those same noises all the way down the table until we sunk to 15th place?? Or even during the time we sink down the play-off spots. I've said it before, but I don't think we have the mental strength to win in the play-offs, though of course we will undoubtedly play the much better football, have the worst of the luck, and come out with the moral victory. But moral promotion is not what we want. However, on the opposite side of this view is that fact that we do have the players, skill, nous, spirit, and class to win this league - or go up automatically anyway. We just need to make these games count. We need to win on Saturday, and we need to take that win into Tuesday. A draw is not good enough, we no longer have the buffer to be content with that.
One thing is for certain: with those two poles of supporters on here, there are going to be a hell of a lot of told-you-so's come season end, whatever the outcome!
I think there is no need to panic but i understand the every thing all be fine mentality is nieve listening to Adkins last night i think he well knows and is perhaps now thinking its time for action .But this league is unforgiving and there are some very strong and good sides at this level who are now waking up and are starting to exact pressure on the top two this run has been worrying but we have not been losing week in week out and have been picking up points enough to maintain top two for some time now and without rose tinted specs on think we are in a great position with a good squad at our disposal. It could mean play offs in the end but with our firepower no one would look forward to playing us and if play offs it is the squad and staff have done a good job
And I can say that now, because I've just become a senior member! I really thought of you senior members as wizened oak trees, who'd been here working tirelessly, dispensing balanced and true Southampton wisdom, welcoming in non-WUM opposition fans, encouraging sensible debate, and being founts of knowledge. Something akin to being knighted. And here I am, one of you, after a few months of spouting nonsense!
Hmm...so the person who signed Gary Hooper for £200,000 and plucked Jack Cork from the obscurity of the Chelsea youth team, does not have a good eye for a player?...what a load of old bollox!...Who should he have signed instead of Billy Sharp?, Wayne Rooney?. Sharp, Cork, Hooivelt and Fox are excellent signings for a Championship club and will make the step up to the next level with ease IMO.
someone should set up a poll titled realist or living in denial and see who the majority are i would but don't how to
We will have to wait on Sharp, Lee and Falque as whilst they all promise much, none of them have had the opportunity to deliver yet so they could all turn out great or could all be flops, no one can say yet. Unlike the majority on here it seems I am most concerned about Sharp as I tihnk he may struggle to settle in the area and may get homesick, but only time will tell. PS - that sounds like I am wirting him off alreadu I'm not, I'm just not saying he will 100% be awesome like a lot of other Saints fans.
not sure where your going with the whole transfer thing and as for plucking jack cork from obscurity do you know anything cork was on loan here years ago played for adkins at scunthorpe and was playing for burnley before we signed him, I think pretty much every fan associated to the championship knew about him. i am not having a go at his transfers i think what he's bought in has been good and he's used his contacts well to get them. We got fox cause cork was already here and we got sharpe cause he played under adkins before Hooivelt was a loan turned permanent and he wasn't playing first team football. All good signings i agree
Do I know anything?..well I know that Cork was on loan at S****horpe in 2007, BEFORE he played on loan here in 2008. "i'm not convinced with Adkins transfer history that he could of pulled it off" were your words, strange thing for to say for a person who is not having a go at his transfers.
I was merely saying that the transfers Adkins has mad have all been fairly run of the mill ones i agree he has made some fantastic signings. but apart from the unknown ones like lee, there has been a connection to either Adkins or southampton with his transfers.
