up and away

You only have to recall the huge number of threads on this very forum on the 4-5-1/4-4-2 debate to know that this "no plan B" thing is utter codswallop. You also have to recall that Pardew only turned to this in desperation. Although it worked extremely well, the sight of Connolley in the second half when going 442, soon saw the end of that. Tactically Pardew was extremely poor, quoting surprise on more than one occasion when teams employed something different against us (Brighton at home, Colchester away when they went with small pacey forwards rather than the normal lumps). The only manager he did get the better of was Paul Ince, but I am not sure I would bother with that on the resume. You will also recall that the introduction of Antonio and Papa was equally hit and miss, as likely to fail as succeed. With the added knowledge that Papa only really worked out when played alongside Lambert, rather than midfield or the wing where he was often positioned. The ability to change the game round was often not there because of the options on the bench. In some cases perfect for converting to 451 from 442, but really not a viable option when you are chasing a game. Often we had a bench capable of changing things round, only for that scenario to never materialise and little impact for the scenario we were finding. We played some excellent football playing 442 with great attacking talent putting in the effort. But we could never sustain that effort if we had to play more than 1 game a week because of the effort required and the fact there was no defensive spine to the team, mainly because the midfield lost it's shape. Pardew without doubt was intelligent in some aspects, totally devoid in others, but I just felt he was a rabbit in the headlights far too often. With his major fault being able to identify the wood from the trees. There is a big difference in Adkins approach, firstly get the team defensively sound, take control of the midfield, subsequently allowing the forwards to do their stuff. You won't get Adkins taking the risk as Pardew did against Brighton, leaving the team totally exposed when Brighton came and gave it a go, rather than expecting to be battering on their goal from minute one.

you are so wrong. top scorer, 3 goals in 2 games. visibly improved by 100% when his header went in. the confidence and more importantly his touch is returning. anyone who would drop lambert after last saturdays performance clearly has a limited grasp of football imo I don't believe I would drop Ricky, but you must have a limited grasp on the bleeding obvious to see something is not right with Ricky. I was talking to an Arsenal season ticket holder who went along to the Tranmere game and saw Ricky for the first time, commenting upon how unfit he was and whether he was carrying an injury. That woke me up a tad and made me wonder that the progress he has made recently comes from such a low base? There would be a very strong case for starting with Guly and Bernard up front if both were fully fit. But that is not the case and it makes sense to stick with Ricky even though he is off his best. Adkins knows exactly what is best for the team and I am sure he will make the correct decision, we can only guess who delivers in training. The one thing that does concern is getting Ricky back to full fitness, how ever that is done. If Adkins believes that resting Ricky is the best option to achieve that, I would not argue.

If you compared last saturdays game to the Swindon JPT or Swindon league game there has been a huge difference. If you look at the first and second halves there is enough difference there. No matter how you cut it, he is still a way off last years form, but getting better.

We played some excellent football under Pardew, but there was always that underlying weakness that would always cost us. It's too early to say that Adkins will do the business, but it looks very much the case. I heard Pardew state so many times exactly the same things as Adkins, but only Adkins in a very short space of time has had the wherewithal to actually do it. It was totally frustrating to see Pardew regularly repeat the same mistakes over and over. At least under Adkins you can see these problems being solved. What Adkins has done is given the team a sound defensive base, something that continually eluded Pardew consistently. The team is now developing attacking wise from that sound defensive base, capable of keeping it's shape and not gifting the opposition. I don't know what happened to Pardew in the close season, but no one looked like they gave a rat's arse when the came back, unbelieveable! I would have expected Pardew to make the play off's this season, possibly an automatic. I expect Adkins to make it automatic going by the progress we have made, could not be happier. Adkins looks the real deal, Pardew just a possible.

How long has he been with us? and his goals + assists are very slim! Morgan flatters to deceive a lot of the time but under Adkins he is becoming more effective. For attacking threat you have to go with Chaplow. A very good and difficult question to answer and one I gladly leave to Adkins. Would not surprise me if Chaplow starts as he has worked with the rest of the squad all the time and Morgan has had the midweek game + travel.

Settle down, I really doubt this will come to any form of custodial sentence. As far as I can gather this was nothing premeditated or intended to deliberately disfigure. Yes, it all sounds bad, but unless he has a Joey Barton history this will just be at the worst a well earned lesson for him and the guy will get paid out. All sides seem to be keeping mum at the moment, so I can't see this having legs.

Ikea in Brooklyn came up with a very logical solution to a poor local road infrastructure, by using the water, something that could work extremely well in redeveloping St Mary's. I don't fancy the trip to a location just off the M27, those types of places just seem to be soulless. You only have to look how bad Liverpool docks were and that has been transformed by cafes/bars/eateries/business.

Anyone who has had the misfortune to watch Brazilian league football would recognise the type immediately. For a forward he is persistent, skillful and not worried about getting in there. If you go back through the years and all those teams that came and parked the bus in front of goal, Guly looks better than anything for this league and that problem. He could easily go on to be far better but I would hold back to get a decent marker other than Tranmere. Definitely not too lightweight for this league, but on a cold, rainy night in Hartlepool may have him wondering what the fook he is doing here.

With due respect to you Steve, that statement on GOS is absolute ******** and the tactic is the fall back position of the safety first manager who can't see the wood from the trees. Sticking 10 defenders in the penalty area stops goalkeepers from getting to the ball, sheer numbers in the box leads to players not marking properly, thinking somebody else is, (it happened regularly with Saints), No clearance outlet and just invites further pressure, allows 7 at least in the penalty area and a couple more just outside, some of the forwards necessarily used as defenders couldn't mark to save their lives. Leaving two and even three forwards up really stretches the opposition. It means that at least two are defensive, two more must fill the gap in front of them and with one taking the kick a maximum of five attackers are in the penalty area, meaning that five are marked and there are three spare defenders plus a goalkeeper with the space to be able to claim balls in the six yd area with the goal line covered. We have never looked in any difficulty at corners under Adkins but looked in all sorts of trouble previously with 11 in the penalty area and the ball launched into the six yd box. Adkins is, as far as I am concerned the best manager we have had since the Ted Bates/LM/Chris Nicholl era, including WAG's success, and Hoddle's tactics. We are very much work in progress and there will be a lot more to come. I think our biggest test will to be hang on to him. When you look at some of the top teams and managers who do this, you really are on thin ice with that statement. If they are putting in men around the goalie to restrict him or other players to block defenders you have to respond, depending upon the threat they pose. The only way you can do that is with additional players. The circumstances dictate your approach, there is really no other option. ManU are the classic at this, 1 left up front and the cavalry charge forward when the opposition lose the ball, from the attacking ManU players in defence. Flood the defence and don't give the opposition space, gladly conceding additional corners until they clear their lines and start again from there. You just see too many tactically good teams and managers doing this to go against it not paying off. Newcastle under Keegan had one of the most effective counter attacks going when defending corners. Ruel Fox would tuck into the defence on the right hand side then burst out to the wing whenever the goalie or defender gained control. A simple chip or throw into that space and Fox was charging down the wing to feed the one solitary attacker or cut the ball back to those arriving late.

To me there is a world of difference, both say the same things about how they want the game played and how disgusted they are when players don't follow directions. The difference is that Adkins gets the message through. Looking at a lot of things the players are actually now doing are the things Pardew talked about but never seemed to be able to stick. As for the bookies, my picks were Saints and Peterborough for automatic, on the simple basis they had more money to spend than the opposition. Not that difficult for this league.

I agree he is still off last years form, but improving. But he still did not deserve dropping!

Yes and No. Guly drops off, someone takes up the space, very impressive. With the added benefit that Guly has the skill and vision to make everything work. Worth the MOM and I thought Hammond was the glue that held it all together. I don't think Ricky is injured? but he just seems slower to read things that previously he just would "have it". All the problems I have argued against under Pardew are no longer there, but we have not reached the dizzy heights of some of Pardews football. But I would take this every day as it seems repeatable to a level to deliver. If Huddersfield try to play football against us, they will get handed their arses the same as Bournemouth were.

We had pennies when we bought him, can never understand that. Even more amazing was that we managed to sell him on injured, I don't believe he ever played a serious game for Stoke, mind you neither has Pulis.

Interesting. I did not realise that they had been so accepted elsewhere. Pompey could well do with them :-) In my view however, I felt that one of his biggest mistakes (and I think that there were many) was the way that the team that were relegated was so quickly disbanded . The norm these days seems to be to give it one good shot to get back into the Preniership once you are relegated. West Brom are past masters at this. Brum & Newcastle are others who have succeeded in the last couple of years. If it fails, you then cutback. AS soon as we were relegated we just managed to p*** off the majority of our players and disband our team. The players all wanted to get away - with the relegation clauses being a major reason for this. We ended up giving away (or at best receiving small fees) for the likes of Delap, Niemi, Ormerod , Quashie, SKP, Higgy - all of whom were undoubtedly immensely p***ed off at the relegation clauses and wanted to get away asap. All of them have subsequently performed in the Premiership. Our best chance to regain our place in the Premiership was in our first season down. The relegation clauses were one of the main factors why we did not achieve that. Our best chance was buying players in the January transfer window when we were still in the Premier. That's what we did and why we were in such financial trouble the following season. All that bluff about insisting Crouch stayed was only to gain the maximum fee, something that did work out. Nope, we took the best line but spending £4.5M under that twitchy, saddle faced clunt was a total waste, when he gets out done by that tactical genius Bryan Robson who spent fook all. Even bigger LOL when you try and tell us who did this first? It would not surprise me that Weston is right here, as it was during those formative years of the Premier that the salaries between the Premier and the CCC grew to exceptional levels. There was no need for such strategy previously and I can remember Lowe instigating the clauses at an early stage such the only player left without such a clause was Claus. That would have made it as sometime just after 1996. Several Premier clubs approached Lowe for the exact detail of how Saints implemented this policy and something that is now standard with the majority of clubs within the Premier. The one exceptional thing that came out of the Lowe era was the Academy. I don't know how much of this was luck with getting George Prost, but watching Gary Lineker last night and the necessity for getting the skills right with the players, made the Academy under George Prost stand out like a beaming light. Gareth Bale really surprised me, just a run of the mill kid, nothing exceptional. Then it was as if all those training sessions and practice in the dome suddenly exploded and he was suddenly looking to be world class. All that youth team had very similar traits ingrained into them. The comments about how Theo would run as if he could go over puddles without a splash was evident in style even to the slower players such as Surman. Of that youth team, Best was the stand out for skill, it has just not developed as others. When you look at the people Lowe appointed for the Academy, Jennings, Alias and Prost, that was an exceptional group that any Premier club would fall over backwards in having. The star though was Prost, who turned pigs ears into silk purses.

In my experience of such things I am not so sure. I would be more likely to believe that the need for hospital treatment would be because of a blood wound, which can throw the light either way. Whatever, it's poor judgement to be in such a place at such a time for a professional footballer. The odds of drunken club goers having a lash when totally ****ed must be odds-on, especially where footballers with money and females are concerned. If the allegations are true then I believe it's best to get rid of him, but only once we have a suitable replacement in. What's the point in trying to maximise the damage of any stupidity?

I think the main reason people like Derry lost total patience with Pardew, is the repetition of errors over a long period of time that they just gave up on him. There can be little doubt that what Adkins has achieved over a few weeks, Pardew could not implement over a season. The set pieces on Saturday showed exactly how to make an opening for a goal scoring opportunity, something that was a rarity previously. Davis is having to roll the ball out to start the attack, wingers stay by the line when we are going forward. All these things I heard Pardew commenting on, but never saw anything concrete develop. I don't know what exactly has gone wrong with Lambert, but he's not as bad as a lot are making out. I saw some worse games from him last season but he does struggle in the second half. Even so, many teams would be more than happy with just a couple of our "lesser" forwards. Get Ricky back on form and last years goal tally will soon be eclipsed, that's without another loan. Chaplow may not be the best, but he was exactly what we wanted when Barnard went off.

Me too but we do that a lot here (not just with managers) so what can you do? We had a decent season last year, I hope we have a better one this year. Pardew played a big part in turning the club around and any success this season will be due in part to his work last season. I just hope that Adkins can get the team scoring as freely as Pardew did. Hopefully that will come. Although I was mightily impressed with Adkins yesterday, I am holding off making definitive comparisons because I have seen much better under Pardew. But that in no way means we need to get the team scoring as freely as Pardews good games. Having a solid defence and resolute midfield will gain easily over Pardews approach in the long run with the attacking options we have. I am sure Pardew never wanted us to lose our shape and players to start aimlessly wandering into blind alleys, but this continued to happen. Adkins on the other hand soon made his point with Puncheon by pulling him off the field and replacing him with Holmes. Such is Adkins influence that a few bellowed instructions and everyone is back in position. In fairness it's not beyond the realms of possibility that yesterdays game could have ended 0-0, but with the amount of pressure they were under you could always see them giving away something. When Pardew went to 451 at home to the 3-2 loss to Bristol Rovers last season, I said then that was the way forwarded and heaped praise upon him irrespective of the result. That got us onto a mini run to get us within touching distance of the play offs, only for all the defensive aspect to get forgotten for us to continually play boom or bust football. I would have given Pardew more time, but these are the reasons why I am shedding no tears upon the fact he has gone. We don't know as yet that Adkins can keep this going, but I can see Pardews weaknesses being overcome and that was never going to happen previously unless he unearthered a couple of miracles from the transfer market.

That was clearly out of order, unfortunately all clubs have their fair share of idiots. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if Mitchell didn't mouth off to the press, but still out of order. Mitchell being a mouthy gobsheite is a separate issue. I would like to say it serves him right, but not with kids about. I wonder if next time he thinks about keeping private conversations just that! It would not surprise me if his missus kicks the sheite out of him when he gets home.

I don't know why Cortese should find this funny? Just cast your mind back to the timing of Mitchells remarks and the effect that could have had on Adkins. If we had to start again at that point we would be in far worse shape with a further long delay. Luckily the contact with Adkins insured that did not happen and in his own words days before he signed, "Saints behaved impeccably". So your advice is to have a quiet word with Mitchell the next time Cortese sees him. Well that opportunity arose when Mitchell phoned the club and that quiet word was had. Whether this became public or not is down to Mitchell and why the fook should he be welcome if he is telling lies that can damage the club.

I don't know for sure if Markus actually made the statement about Pardew, just fully prepared to accept others argument based around this point and others who are trusted. The one thing I do know is that Saints had been looking as you pointed out at some time, but were no longer looking well before May 18th. As for your information which sort of ties into duckhunters, I am just not in the know, but it would make sense. There is more than enough in the open to say this was something that was not planned or initially expected. You really are in the realms of the no lunar landings to put up a cohesive case for the opposite. Normally if the billionaire owner of a club says he wants the manager gone, there is normally very little delay in that happening, so I can fully understand Pardews unease with the whole situation. This may explain why Pardew was not on top of his game and why pre-season never produced. Cortese is by no means user freindly but without doubt he is doing his utmost to push Saints forward. I love the fact he stands up against mouthy thwats like Mitchell, particularly when he does things in private. If Mitchell then decides to reveal all with no need to do so, more fool him.

Again THIS, some people need to open their eyes And some people need the ability of an 11 year old to apply some common sense. I heard that Liebherr had commented to someone during a game that he was unhappy with Pardew. This was way before the end of the season (possibly before Wembley) and something I ignored because I did not believe it to be true. I just thought it was out of character for Markus and especially as Cortese keeps quiet about these things. Since then several reliable people have said they believed the information was kosher, enough for me to accept that this could well be true. So what you have is that Liebherr did not rate Pardew, but Cortese thought he was the best candidate to take us up the following season. It must be equally apparent to all of us, that although Liebherr paid the bills, Cortese ran the whole show. There is absolutely no way that Cortese would have risked this season with Pardew, unless he believed that he thought Pardew would be here for the end and the best candidate for doing the job. Something he clearly understood when he issued the statement on Pardews sacking, knowing that action at that point would do no favours for getting us up this season. So when Cortese issued that statement in May regarding Pardew, he was the manager he believed would be in charge of us for that season. There are no lies or contradictions here. I fully accept that at a previous stage the owner was not fully enamoured, but he was not dictating this decision. I also accept that Cortese reviewed who would be managing Saints before the last season ended. But at the end of all this, Pardew was kept on as the best person to get that job done and they agreed and planned the future actions and finances for getting that job done. As for Eddie Mitchell, just what has the club publically stated? Absolutely nothing, not even the fact he left a bar bill unpaid! Just because some gobsheite has pleaded the old "mate down the pub routine" in telling all the world what a thwat he is, this is picked up and used against Cortese. Just who the fook do you think you are protecting, next it's going to be he managed to get a train to run on time.

What that great provider of landfills throughout the south did was to directly pose the question of Pardew getting the chop to anyone with links to Saints, then cut and paste the responses and present it as a fait accompli that Pardew was getting the sack. I notice when they tried the same routine this season that even Le Tiss had cottoned on and gave them nothing to munch on. The reason this would have got Cortese's goat would have been that the season ahead had already been planned out and unless he gave these reassurances, could see Pardew looking elsewhere and the whole process of recruiting another manager would have to start again. Pardew had good cause to be nervous about his future, when you go directly into print and state you did exactly the opposite to your bosses paramount instructions. I know of no instances where Liebherr has interferred in the smallist of ways at Saints, letting Cortese run the whole show. Liebherr brought Cortese in and just let him get on with it, he did not do over the top. I did not believe at the time that Liebherr stated he was not happy with Pardew, but several reliables have vouched for the source during one of the games, that I tend to believe that as kosher. Your staunch support of that landfill provider does you proud, but even LeTiss caught on to that underlying odour.

I heard in April that Cortese was looking at alternatives to Pardew and had decided before the end of that season to stick with Pardew. So when all of this surfaced in May (basically the rumours that Cortese had been looking), Cortese's hand was forced to issue the statement regarding Pardew to ensure everyone knew where they were and how the season would be panning out. Possible targets and requirements had already been laid out and that was Cortese's intention. I don't see any lies here only your interpretation of events. Liebherr did state his disatisfaction with Pardew but Cortese thought it best to stick with him. If you believe for one minute that Cortese would deliberately wreck this season, when he could so easily have got rid of Pardew there and then with Liebherr's blessing, you don't have a scooby doo. Whatever doubts Cortese may of had, they were already expunged by the time they sat down together for planning this season.

The trouble is with Cortese is that he does not do ego's and has no time for bullsheiters. Well sadly Nicolas the Football League is stuffed with them and the dumb fooks don't have the sense to keep their mouths shut, even when they are called out in private. So our CEO has called him out aand although not denying him access to the directors box, has said he is unwelcome unless he explains himself. Mitchell can't put up any defence with the exception he stated what he believed to be true. But rather than say he was wrong, he prefers to bluster along with this approach playing the morally injured. What a twhat! Cortese has called him out, liar, liar, pants on fire and like the rest of the nonsense we get on here, "I was only repeating what a mate down the pub told me". I still cannot understand why both the Scunny and Bournemouth chairman had to even go public, apart from the inability to keep their mouths shut and misplaced idea of ego.

Give Pardew credit for what he did last season, just use a modicum of common sense when trying to extended that to this season and a direct comparison to Adkins. Just take Adkins results and line them up with sections of Pardews record last season and you will find sections where Adkins comes out on top. One fact which you fail to take account of is that Adkins has inherited a side worse than the one that ended last season. Something Pardew demonstrated with his early results and further biased under Adkins with injuries, suspensions and trying to only now get the team fit. Just a really dumb comparison, heavily influenced by factors out of one of the managers control. The proof of this pudding will come the end of the season, such is the position we have been left in. That will be the time to have a fair guide on the relative merits of each manager. What your post has done is to commit exactly the same mistake you are complaining of others previously making.