Your star this season, will be Nigel Adkins (if you manage to stay up) as without trying to cause offence, I don't see proven premier league quality in your team, clearly you have quality from the lower levels but your manager is going to have to inspire your players to not just perform to the best of their ability, but also punch above their weight. Tactics also need to be key, and if he gets this right, along with the team spirit then you have every chance of staying up.
A lot will rest on Lallana's shoulders. In his "3rd man" role, a great deal of our attacking movement will go through him like it did with Lambert the last 2 seasons. If he hides away from the action or just plays generally poorly, we'll have a tough time keeping the ball or keeping the opposiition at bay. Lambert doesn't have ball-busting pace (neither does Sharp). We know that and that's fine if we know how to work with that. Hasn't stopped Gomez, Dzeko, Carroll, Holt etc. Lambert will have to change his game to fit into the system. We won't be playing through him so much, so instead of coming deep to get the ball, he'll need to act more selfishly and use his energy to get in the gaps and freak out defenders. He's not Lionel Messi and doesn't have the pace, skill or stamina to be everywhere at once. As Boss says, our players aren't perfect and do have limitations. It's Nigel's job to realise the strenngths and weaknesses, then smash them together with tactics that show off the strengths while not allowing the weakesses to get exploited. We've looked a bit rusty in the 433 during pre-season simply because it's new, but I'm convinced that it will be the way forward once we've adapted to it. I see no reason why we can't achieve a respectable 40-50 poibt finish.
