there are certain things on a "scientific" level he did at southampton that will stand to them for many years
really it comes down to this.. when he took over at southampton they were in admin down in the dregs. they had a good ground and some interesting things already
like pardew
but really they finished 2nd in league 1 and 2nd in championship under atkins then sacked him brutally and hired Pinocchio and signed a lot of good players along the way. You can't fault the guy for what he did can you?
I would say that not one player signed in league 1 survived long did they? Is there one? and even looking at champtionship year cork was the only one.
So would it be fair to say that the playing staff themselves did a great job as did atkins... cortese did work off the field.
in the prem thn it might be different.. I remember them snatching gaston ramieres out form under us (thanks for that btw) so really one must wonder.
Thing is with Nicola, he would want total control and to basically answer to no one, he was exactly what we needed at the time and our growth under him was exceptional, once we got to the Prem though the rate of growth was always going to slow down, and the belief is he wanted to keep spending and spending, and our owner wanted to have more of a say in matters which ultimately left to him leaving. Introduced the great Markus to us (RIP) and I'm not sure there's any Saints fans who aren't grateful/can't appreciate what he did for us.
In summary, he was a bit of a power hungry dictator ****, but he was OUR power hungry dictator ****, and we loved him for it, the ambition we show now and the way fans look at things is all down to him imo. Him moving on when he did was probably best for all parties though.
Also he appointed Pardew who promptly signed Rickie Lambert for £1 million (Arguably the best million we've ever spent, apparently Cortese took A LOT of convincing by Alan to part with that amount for a L1 striker). Our current captain was also signed in League 1 as well - even dropped a division to join us
Schneiderlin played for us in L1 too but think we signed him the year we went down from Championship.
