The Kraken

I was referring more to his first paragraph or two, more about the footballing reasons for sacking rather than foundationless personal accusations about AP. That said, I'm not sure there's too much difference between what Prof said and I did; he said AP et al were dimsissed for footballing reasons, which is what the club quotes backs up. I just believe that the club statement did indeed justify the action, and I believe was as honest as a club statement on a manager's dismissal needs to be.

The worse pitches in this league aren't ploughed fields. It was stated last season that we couldn't beat these teams away because of the state of the pitch, but it's not as if we passed the ball around like Arsenal, we were always quite a direct side. There will be some pitches worse than others, but we may even benefit from that as NA is trying to get us to play with more width, where the surface will be better than a congested middle. I think NA is also smart enough to realise that we will need to adapt our style of play slightly to whoever we are playing.

The "assumption" that Pardew was sacked for footballing reasons comes from the club's statement, where they said: “Following a review of the status in and around the first team, the club has decided that, to achieve its well-known targets, it is essential to make changes to the first-team management and coaching. These targets for sustained and significant progress embrace both the first team and the football development and support centre as integrated, co-operative units." "We recognise that frequent changes to the football management are unlikely to assist in the winning of trophies and promotions. "However, we are taking these steps to achieve our aims, which we share with all supporters, to get promoted this season, and secure long term stability and progress for our football operations." That's pretty clear to me. (Edited to add the full statement)

I'm not so sure. Both full backs were also always dropping off for a short ball, as was Fonte and on occasions Seaborne. Clearly Tranmere allowed us more space here and better teams will try to close us down more, but if there is a really strong desire to play it short its a real risk to go for a blitz to try and cut that out, as it leaves a big hole in behind.

Agreed. I find the desire by others to continually try to see more into the situation and refuse to believe the statements made by the club and the manager as quite weird. If there was a gross misconduct charge, why on earth would the club publicly lie to the national press? There is absolutely nothing to gain from the club lying about the reasons why 3 staff have had their contracts terminated. In fact, it would distinctly to the club's disadvantage to do so. The logical course in such an event would have seen Pardew, Downes and Murdoch sacked with no further comment made by the club. Often the case people will just believe what they want to believe, though.

Get what exactly? Pardew had his contract terminated by the club, and the club announced the reasons why (according to the statement, the decisions were taken to help the club "achieve its well-known targets" following "a review of the current status in and around the first team"). The club then enter a period of negotiation with Pardew to determine the terms of his compensation for termination of contract. What's not to get?

Are those not footballing reasons then?

Or maybe all those rumours were just rumours and AP and his staff were let go for footballing reasons after all.

I wasn't suggesting otherwise with regard to Adkins, though its clearly still early days and I'mnot getting over excited about a 2-0 defeat to Tranmere. But I think Pardew will use this as a stepping stone back up the league; he's a better manager than many give him credit for, not up there with the best, but he can rightly have pride in what he achieved with us IMO. Good luck to him, I always liked him as a manager and as a man.

I wouldn't bet against seeing him in a Championship or even lower Prem job before too long.

Indeed. He may be clueless with bronze but the bloke can definitely sculpt.

I was sat in the Chapel; the lovely Charlotte and Fenners were down in the Kingland/Chapel corner.

Over-reacting much? They are reporting on some transfer speculation surrounding one of our players. Big deal.

It doesn't make any sense for us to sell in January. None whatsoever. And especially not for £3m. Jonjo Shelvy has already been discussed, he went for £2m. And you only have to look at the like of Daniel Sturridge, who let his contract expire at Man City to go to Chelsea. His fee at tribunal was set at a total of £6.5m (£3.5m up front, £0.5m on 10, 20 30, 40 games, £1m on 1st England cap), so the tribunals these days are setting realistic figures for players. Everton will potentially have to shell out £1.5M to Leeds for Luke Garbutt, who had barely played for their reserves let alone their first team. And Leeds took £5M from Chelsea in an out of court settlement for those luminaries Tom Taiwo and Michael Woods. If we sold him in January it would have to be for much more than we'd get at tribunal in the summer. If he has another high scoring season I can see his tribunal figure being at least £5m in the summer, so we'd have to be looking at a transfer fee of £7m or £8m to make it worth our while.

I think this paragraph absolutely sums up my frustrations at our start to this season. It wasn't that the players looked grossly unfit; of course there were a few players who weren't up to scratch but it's not as if we had a team of lumbering fatties. It's just that we didn't seem to have any players who looked like they wanted to grab a game by the scruff of the neck and give it a relly good go. The Plymouth game on opening day was symptomatic of our malaise at the time; we battered them for long spells without putting the ball in the net, right up to the point when they went and scored, at which point we just let the game drift to its final conclusion. It was if no-one had the ability, on the pitch or off it, to get motivation levels going. The Brizzle game looked like it could have given the squad the confidence push they needed, but then the dismissal of Pardew and appointment of Wilkins pushed us even further into the mire. What Adkins seems to have done is get our leaders on the pitch playing like such again. Fonte was a shadow of himself in early games, he's again looking like the class act we know he is. Hammond was utterly dire in early season but again is starting to like a skipper. And Lambert on Saturday was much, much more like his old self where before he had looked utterly bereft of confidence and belief. The difference between the performances at the back end of last year and the start of this season were unforgivable. And they can't (as was tried at the time) solely be blamed on the departures of Waigo and Antonio, we had so many players that were under par right from the off. Thankfully NA seems to be rectifying that, and my confidence levels in this are back to where they were at the start of the season.

Another case of double standards? Why does the 4-0 result against Bristol not count? Or the 2-0 cup win against Bournemouth? Or the good performance against Bolton? Yet a 2-0 win against a truly horrific side in Tranmere does appear on your radar. Yet apparently a 1-1 draw against Yeovil doesn't, and neither does a 0-0 home draw against Colchester. Very odd. I'm happy that Adkins is here, and he has made a good start, no doubt. The game on Saturday was 100% better to watch than anything I saw last season. But lets not carried away and portray Pardew as the anti-christ. By the way, your last sentence brings up a conundrum. If the chairman truly didn't want us tainted with "that sort of football" then why wait so long to make the change?

In hindsight you're right, and in hindsight we'd all hope for that so that NA could have had a pre-season to prepare the players in his mould. That said, the fans or ex-players cannot be blamed at all. Cortese is well known to be a very determined man and is not influenced by "fan power" or the opinions of former players here. Cortese is his own man and while he will shoulder the plaudits for bringing in Adkins he will also shoulder some blame for the way it happened.

And Adkins is also benefitting from that financial muscle; in terms of the players he has on the books already, and that he has already brought in 2 loan players from the division above. I also fully expect the cheque book will be open for him in the new year. Pardew did a very good job here last season, despite what the nay sayers might try and claim. Adkins in turn has got off to a good start and also looks capable of taking us to the next level. Time will tell, but in my eyes we have replaced one very capable manager with another very capable manager.

Given that Pardew identified the need for a new CM, replacement for Antonio, and CF backup for Lambert all throughout the summer, my opinion would be that internal politics played their part and why the whole club, not just the management team, should be held to account for our lacklustre start to the season.

Then you're clearly hearing only what you want ot hear. Our style of play under Adkins is different to under Pardew. Much nicer to watch. However, there is also an argument that while Pardew's style of play wasn't too attractive, if was often effective. Hence the number of good wins last season, and why many people saw our early season form as a blip and not indicative of what would happen over the course of the season. But then it seems to be me you've made your mind up anyway and are just looking for another excuse to have a pop at a former manager, when what we should be doing is putting the past behind us and concentrating on the future with NA.

So a 2-0 cup victory against high flying Bournemouth, a narrow defeat (and very good performance) against Premier League Bolton and a 4-0 away league victory mean nothing. Yet a 2-0 home victory against a team in the relegation zone is cause for a thread on how much better this new guy is. I'm amused by your double standards.

Not really IMO. It gives us more options for injuries/suspensions and we've been crying out for that since pre-season and beyond, but not sure if it gives us anything more than we had. Maybe Hammond's poor form earlier on accentuated a weakness in midfield, but with Hammond and Morgan back on form I only see that Chaplow gives us some nice options rather than a new dimension. In answer to your question; no idea if we would be better or worse off with Pardew here. I seriously doubt we would have lost 4 games in a row with AP in charge. I also seriously doubt that we would be playing the passing-type of football we are now, under Pardew. All in all, the most important thing is that Adkins seems to have the team playing the way he wants and performances are on the up again. My expectations of the season remain exactly as they were after the Bristol Rovers game; automatic promotion.

Picture from the article; who knew Wayne Rooney was a Saints fan with his own 125 kit?

I think that's the whole problem; the reserve league has descended to such a level that we were playing against the likes of Forest Green Rovers reserves side, so not really that far removed from what we have now. The idea of this new approach is that we can potentially be more flexible about the types of opposition we set up to play by setting up friendly games to fit in with our own schedule. It's a good idea in theory, but if in practise it means that we can only get access to games against the Nike Academy and such like, then I agree with you that it's a bit pointless.

We'll still get money for him if he goes at the end of the season. There's absolutely no need for us to sell him in January, it would be lunacy.