Lambert supported by Lallana and Oxlade-Chamberlain is a far superior attack to Sharp and Keogh. All three have proved to be good Premier League players, with Oxlade having full England honours, Lallana being called up, and there is a lot of debate over Lambert, while Sharp and Keogh are not making huge impacts in the championship. I really think you'd struggle to find a League One side with as much quality as that one, they really should have run away with that league.
Trouble is it is as others have said quite impossible to predict what would have happened. AP and NA had two distinct styles of management. Both had the pedigree to get us promoted and one did. Had AP stayed in my opinion it would have taken longer to get to the premier. Although we would probably had some different players.
Did Scunthorpe ever have Sharp and Hooper at the same time? If he can pull that together at Reading next season it would be awesome.
Pardew would have taken an extra year to get out of L1 unless it was via scraping into the play offs. He wouldn't have turned that team around to get where it got and definitely wouldn't have been able to maintain that final run that held Huddersfield at bay. Would have taken him a few years if ever to get out of the Championship. Under him I could picture us being like Leicester having to throw money around trying to get back to the Prem. That is a measure of what Adkins achieved. Adkins is twice the manager Pardew is and Pardew is being found out now. Still not safe from Relegation with a team that did well on the back of a couple of good signings last year and are able to attract relatively big names. Even with the Europa diversion and a few injuries after last season Newcastle should've been a safe bet for Top 8 and at least safe from relegation by now. If Adkins had the Newcastle job I think they would be. They have a better squad than us (on paper) and are scarily positioned in the league to the point they should be glad that their rivals are imploding. I think Hugton would also have Newcastle doing better right now than Pardew. If Pochettino had Newcastle this season I think he would have got them Top 6 again even after Ba going. Newcastle is what our short term goal is. Trying to be a club that is on the tails of the Top 6, meaning that every season one of those Top 6 ends up finishing behind us if you know what I mean.
Pardew would have got us out of League One, albeit via the play-offs. We only missed out on the play-offs in the first year due to our ten point penalty and given the trauma we'd all be through pre-Liebherr, there was a lot of acclimatising to be done. We started out like a rocket in the Championship and that's due to the belief that Adkins had instilled in the team. This gave us the momentum to push on and escape the Championship on the first attempt. I don't think we would have had quite the momentum had we gone up via the play-offs.
