Don't think you quite understood Nigel's philosophy. Control the controllables. Blue line and move on. A risk has been taken, but Cortese thinks it is the right one. He is the man who makes decisions and is answerable for them. A good manager has come in and I'm confident that with basically the same team we will get the results we need. Which of us is right...we'll have to wait and see...but which of us is happiest at the moment is obvious.
Southampton are a properly run club in the EPL...we have replaced a manager (which of course never happens!)...we are not people smuggling or drug running. Cortese has not been discovered to be running a string of brothels....a sense of proportion, please.
It is quite sad what has happened to Adkins, but it is also quite sad that people can not see that the man in charge has made a decision he thinks is right. I don't believe for one minute he work up one day and thought, "let's sack Nigel and stuff the season up". As stated on many other threads, you obviously see Saints differently to Cortese. He believes that we can be great. I hadn't seen it and was enjoyong the ride. He wants a faster ride, that is all. Sorry for Nigel, but Cortese clearly thinks he would "only achieve survival" and let's be honest we are three points clear of safety with three of the next four games against Everton, Man United and Man City. A good chance that we'd be right back in it at the end of that.
We replaced an honourable and achieving manager who showed nothing be loyalty to the fans and club by spending months finding a replacement for him without his knowledge and stabbing him in the back. We are no better than any of the other dirt in this league. At one time I thought we were.
You're probably right. I don't like what has happened to Nigel, however I have taken some time to think hard about it and maybe, just maybe Cortese has pulled off a master stroke. If he has and he believes this was the best thing for the club to move forward and he thinks it was the best timing, how else could he have done it. There is never a right time. There is never a nice way.
If you replace a GK, you find another one first, otherwise you may end up without a GK. No one running a major business would find this odd at all. Remember managers break their contracts and leave as well. There is no nice way to be fired, but, unlike us, Adkins will have had his contract paid up (according to the small print). If I could wish Nigel back I would, but he hasn't been shot and will be in another job soon, having benefitted from his performance with us.
David Moyes on Mauricio Pochettino: "I don't think players mope around too long about the manager, and I mean that with real respect for Nigel, but I think players just get on with their job. I would expect them to do that and it will be difficult. I've seen his teams play. I don't know him personally but he looks as if he's a modern, young coach who will have a lot of knowledge of Spanish football, which will help him. You can see it's helped Swansea with Michael Laudrup coming in, it's given them an opportunity to have a little bit of a head-start on players at the lower level who could possibly step up and I would expect him to be very much the same."
I wish people would have some sort of sense of proportion about what has happened. A lovely man has lost his job. He has been given (I am assuming) a very good severance package and can have his pick of several jobs to walk into once he has had a family holiday. Several hundred people at Honda in Swindon won't get another job so easily. Neither will the thousands laid off by Comet, Jessops, Blockbuster etc. in the last few days around the country. The hospital I work for, along with 19 other NHS Trusts in the South West, is about to dismiss ALL their staff and re-employ us on lower salaries with worse conditions. My pay could drop by as much as £6,000 per annum. Of course, as a lifelong Saints fan, I feel for Nigel and wish it could have turned out differently, for his sake and ours as fans. But in terms of treating people badly, Nicola Cortese is very much a Boy Scout.
Very good post Chilco it is 1105 jobs at Honda and those with less than 2 years service will get nothing and as you say not much out there, but at least Nigel wont struggle to pay his mortgage like some affected.
I appreciate your attempt to provide a balanced argument flt and some of you other guys too. But ... some might say that the right time to sack someone was when they failed to achieve the targets set for them. It seems to me that NA has probably exceeded his. I'd be pretty unhappy if I got the sack under those circumstances because the boss had heard about a guy down the road who he thought might be better than me. Some of you guys had better watch out, you seem to be spending more time on 606 than working. I feel your pain olly and I know that no supposedly logical argument can take it away.
