First PL game: Nigel Adkins

https://www.nigeladkins.com/latest-news/2017/8/8/premier-league-opening-day-memories-southampton

Nigel talking about his first game with Southampton in the EPL. Very interesting to hear his thinking and how the City manager admitted he'd changed their tactics to surprise Nigel as he had respect for him and Southampton.

 

Good read

 

His first four games were some tough. Zero points, but the belief was there, with the players & the fans. Such good fun, wouldn't have wanted to return with anyone else at the helm. Never fail to smile on seeing or hearing our Nige.

 

8 years today we bought a certain Rickie Lambert as well, I believe.

 

Did you really say the belief was there with the fans? HR this place was falling apart at the seems with the melt down after the first three games, let alone the fourth defeat. I remember well, telling fans to wait for 10 games.

 

Nah, it was not that bad. The way we played against City, okay the back four looked like a deer in the headlights, but we approached the games with such a good mentality. I'm a bit of nervous nelly, but I had hope from the off that 1st season.

 

Was the first home game the 3-2 loss to Man Utd? God, I remember the absolute heartbreak of that one. And walking through the subway near Debenhams, I nearly got a clump off a Man Utd fan who started yelling "Oh, Robin Van Persiiiieee" right in my face, causing me to tell him to "put a sock in it mate, ffs". Luckily his pal saw the funny side and pulled the fat bewildered Manc away! What a frustrating result, so close and yet so far...bloody Van Persie was on fire that day.

 

It was a horrible 0-2 v Wigan. It got bad after those games, but when Mayuka tore Aston Villa apart that helped a lot.

 

That was quite a good read, although the text was formatted strangely (capitalised words all over the place) which was a bit distracting.

I can't remember now but I would guess that after the Arsenal game (a game I had the misfortune to watch live from the Arsenal end) there were quite a few people worried. We didn't really settle down at the back until Boruc established himself as first choice keeper.

 

Well I remember it going tits up in here when we bottom of the league have played 4 lost 4.

 

Fergie cheated that day. He put Scholes on with 20 minutes to go. Bloke just took control instantly having seen our midfield take the piss out of theirs up to that point.

 

Didn't we make a couple strange subs ourselves which changed the game.

 

And we had that debutant play against Villa. The one with all that talent who seemed to wander into space that day, picking passes and through balled off at ease. I remember thinking "Wow, this is some player."

Fortunately I was sensible enough to realise it was just one game and I didn't go and make any over-enthusiastic predictions about him being our new Messiah; that would have been stupid....

 

He was damn good that day.

 

Took Rickie and someone else off who had been causing United problems.

Let's not talk about that game anymore

 

A treble substitution iirc; Lambert, Lallana and (alright, I googled it) Puncheon all came off on 75 minutes. The bloke in front of me wailed "He's just took our 3 best players off".

Scholes coming on made a difference for them, as he sat deep and none of our players got close to him. But Van Persie was unplayable that day, even though Kelvin saved a pen from him.

 

We were a little naive..........