goes to..... Brian McDermott. Plain ridiculous, to be perfectly honest. No doubt he has done a fantastic job at Reading and should take plaudits. However, Nigel Adkins has been consistently brilliant taking us from the near the bottom of League 1 to Premier League in two seasons. Not to mention that he has managed to keep Saints in the Top Two for the whole season; which is a fantastic achievement in itself. I really do feel sorry for Nigel, he has had got no recognition via awards as a manager over the last season, failing to win a Manager of the Month all season and now this. No doubt Nigel will be his bubbly self but I am disappointed that this great man hasn't picked up something that he deserves. As a Saints fan I am just glad he is the manager of this club and I hope next season he gets the recognition he so rightly deserves.
Adkins gets overlooked all the time,I think it's because he wasn't a great player and the fact that he doesn't talk crap like some other manager's do which brings attention...You only have to look at vacant managerial jobs where he is very rarely on the list of favourites according to the bookies,this is a very good thing for us because we don't want other clubs sniffing around him,but it just shows how invisible he is to the rest of the football world.Strange... Gus Poyet is always in the list for the bookies because of the fact that when he talks crap comes out and he used to play for Chelsea... Getting to the main subject,I think McDermott is the worthy winner of this award due to the fact that he managed to get Reading up as champions and they went on a fantastic run to claim it.Adkins has done a superb job as well,but I think McDermott just edges it.
Agreed he gets overlooked but what McDermott has done, in recovering from the playoff failure last year is amazing too. We had momentum, they didn't. Madness that he hasn't won anything this year but then again we were never top in any 1 month....
I rather suspect that Nigel's attitude will be rather the same as the Sargent Major's "Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
Don't mind in the slightest, honestly. I personally believe Nigel to be the better manager, but the job that McDermott did in the second half is indisputable. Probably also comes down to the fact that Reading seemed like more of a team effort simply because they don't have a Lambert-esque dominant figure, and people success ascribe more to the manager when there isn't someone on the team sheet who really stands out to that extent.
It's manager of the season. We have been consistently in the top 2 all season. Reading went on an unbelievable run in the second half of the season. Reading had a Championship level squad in place, we had a largely League 1 squad. Paul Lambert won it ahead of Warnock last year, so it's not as if 2nd place can't win it. I think its more down to the fact that we were first for so long and lost it at the end. I think it's a shame that Nigel hasn't been officially appreciated in his own right, but he knows and we know what a fantastic job he has done.
Spot on! The press made it appear that we lost the plot at the end of the season, although not as much as West Ham actually did! Truth is Readings run was unstoppable.
Really don't care. I don't suppose Nigel cares that much either. We got promoted, we will be playing PL football next season. I suspected that McDermott would get it. Can't really complain that the manager of the year went to the team who finished 1st.
Let's look at the two managers My guess the expectations from their boards: McDermott - Promotion Adkins - Safe lower-mid table survival Adkins achieves a double promotion. Anything but promotion would probably be perceived as a failure for McDermott. Very stupid imo
It's the principle more than anything, I just disagree with the decision... Like I said earlier, Paul Lambert won it last season (Came 2nd), and surely Adkins achievements are comparable...its just the fact that we have been first most of the season and dropped to second at the end. Stupid thing is... if we had been 5th all season and then finished the season 2nd, Adkins would have probably won it...
I think its because although Reading have had the more recent Premier League status and despite the Saints just getting out of League 1, Southampton just seems like a much bigger club. As such I don't think our achievements are regarded so highly because for a club our size, we 'should' do well in the Championship.
Its a daft award anyways 90% of the time it goes to the winners of the league irrespective of financial backing or previous experience.
To be fair, Pardew won it for the Premier League when they could have easily given it to Mancini for winning Man City the League for the first time in 44 years. So that must have been irrespective of financial backing etc.
Knew someone would call me up on that! First time in years the winner of the league hasn't got it though, plus it was announced the day before the final weekend, which I assume means the vote took place even earlier? Around when Newcastle beat Chelsea i'd imagine. So the winner wasn't nailed on, point taken though!
I'm sure it will have been close, but on balance I think McDermott deserves it for the fantastic run of form that won Reading the Championship.
That's the most stupid thing about all these awards, they are done half-way through the season! There's plenty of time in the summer when there's not much going on to sort them out, so why they give a season's award based on half a season I will never know...but there you go.
I heard that Adkins was due to win it but the organisers changed their decision on the night. There was only 40 minutes left for the winners acceptance speech and their was no way Adkins could keep to that time frame.
