Adkins has instilled a different type of 'winning mentality' this season. Pardew (quite rightly) kept banging on about this last season, and eventually he created a team full of flair and ingenuity that attacked from the off and tried to dominate teams from start to finish. Sometimes this worked (Walsall, Huddersfield, Norwich) and sometimes it didn't.
Under NA we have a team who believe they are better than their opposition and so are happy to calmly go about their business, stepping it up a gear when required. Again this has occasionally not worked, but I think the success to failure ratio is probably better than Pardew's method, and arguably more effective.
I try to steer clear of comparisons between our last two managers but I think here it illustrated my point better. I feel confident under NA that we'll always grind out a win when the chips are down.