Clifford Nelson

Puncheon is certainly polarising the opinion. This is interesting in itself, because either I can't see the good things he is doing, or his supporters see things that doesn't happen. I guess it is probably about the number of times something comes off. My expectation is successful product (pass, cross, shot, etc.) twice out of every three attempts. I'm afraid that I don't see that from him. The proof came yesterday, when the combination of Dickson and Holmes were that more successful than Harding and Puncheon, and in my estimation Harding hadn't done much wrong.

Yes, he gave him the number 8 shirt on the monday and never played him again from the tuesday. Then he seemingly refused him to join Donkey in january and finished it with giving him the final few minutes at Wembley and a trophy. That kind of treatment sends some folk to mental institutions, and as we can see, other folk to Doncaster. I wish him well, but will always wonder if the howling at night outside my country retreat is a wolf or Simon Gillett. Likewise I also got a chiver of delight to at last see the back of Puncheon as he left the field yesterday. At one point AP had talked me into that we had a good player on our hands. I was waiting and waiting to see it happen in front of my eyes, but it never did. We were going to be so excited by his running with the ball, I seem to remember. I have easily managed to contain myself.

The word "quite" is probably an understatement, but you are right about Adkins and Pardew: Both english and schooled at english clubs. But it seems to me that Adkins is not quite as wed to a singular way of playing, and what is probably even more important here is that he doesn't seem to have any hang-ups about working in partnership with other people at the club, plus appreciating that his relationship with the boss is the most important relationship he has got. As we all know, p*ss off the boss and our days are likely to be numbered. Pardew was an odd bird in that he introduces 4-5-1/4-3-3 as a way of playing, which was a major success, only to abandon it as soon as he got himself a second striker and only ever use it again as some kind of plan B until he abandoned it altogether. Odd!

We had someone just like him until recently. He went to Docaster and scored a goal the other day.

The warmup routine didn't seem any different to me yesterday, Phil. Mind you, the real change didn't seem to be any improved stamina, but bringing on left footed people who enjoyed being on the left touch line, with rudimentary ideas about wing play. Suddenly the whole team looked more balanced. The other change was in restricting KD's kicking foot to emergencies only. With these to actions together we looked like a football team. It's rather nice to know that it took NA less than a week to discover what we have been moaning about for months. Since he is an experienced manager I would also expect him to do more subtle things that we haven't already thought of. As for having a fag and a bear in the changing rooms. Do you mean that they have stopped this healthy habit?

Forgive me for believing that Puncheon is not the answer to our problems, he is one of the causes: He reduces the tempo by always wanting to take players on before he does anything with the ball, and if he still has got hold of it he hasn't got a clear idea what to do. Attacking midfielders needs to arrive late into the box with pace and clarity about what he is doing there. None of that seems to apply to Puncheon, so the reason for why he would suit that role escapes me totally. Lallana scored his goals from coming in from the left with the ball at his right foot. He has got more attributes for playing the offensive midfield role because is is much more uncomplicated when he gets in the box. In any case I don't think NA is worrying too much about what to do with Lallana at the moment, but rather at what to do with the team right now. Adam is still a month away from returning to playing. Having found a way for how to create width to the left of the pitch, I'm sure that he is delighted. He is also smart enough to have spotted the obvious solution so quickly. A number of posters have been on about it for the best part of a year, but AP was dead set against the idea, and DW couldn't quite understand the problem. I will, sadly, always remember his solution of putting Guly, a right footed offensive midfielder, in that position as being an exceptionally inept solution. Apart from the obivous difference of Morgan's skill with the 60 yard pass, both him and Hammond are very similar. Whether we are to persevere with 4-4-2 or hopefully becoming a bit more modern in our approach, we must change our approach in centre midfield. We have an offensive midfielder sitting on the bench with a record of 9 goals in 39 appearances in Serie B behind him. I would have thought that such a record was good enough for the third division here. Put him on and then assign either of the other two as a defensive partner to him if we want to carry on with the current formation. However, I remember that the debate about the goal scoring midfielder has been going on in this club for many years. As soon as we buy them they stop scoring, somehow. Or we play them wide (Svensson), or leave them on the bench. It is strange that Hammond, with a reputation for goal scoring at Colchester, has dried up, so what have we done to restrict him? The other two we can hardly blame. Morgan has never scored, and Guly? Well, he's on the bench, of course.

James came on in the first half. Dickson and Holmes with 30 minutes to play in the second. No connection whatsoever. If, as you suggest, James was that poor, then why didn't Puncheon attack him?

Dickson and Holmes gave us width on the left, which before the sub was left to Harding alone. Puncheon clearly has a few strong objections. One is to ever go wide and provide a cross, another is to ever work in partnership with a fullback and a third is never to pass the ball to anybody before he's taken on at least two of the opposition. Taking him off and replacing him and Harding with two traditionally left footed and wing minded players made a magnificent difference.

I am very grateful to NA for seeing us play the ball from the back rather than the permanent hoofing towards RL's and DC's (!!!) heads. But what really turned the game yesterday was taking Harding and Puncheon off for Dickson and Holmes. I don't think that Harding had done much wrong, but as always when he plays with Puncheon in front of him he is left with doing all the work on the left. Puncheon is off everywhere else and doesn't operate as a partner to anybody, apart from that he doesn't have an end product most of the time. My mind is made up: Puncheon isn't the player we thought he would be. One or two small flashes of brilliance (or maybe luck) over all the games he has played isn't enough. Dickson and Holmes created activity along the left, previously neglected, side of the pitch. Neither are world beaters, but they did what was expected of them, included two crosses from the byeline (can't remember when I saw that last). I hope that Harding won't get the blame, because I think he did as much as he could under the circumstances. I have seen enough of Puncheon and I think I understand why he had such difficulty in getting out of non-league and kept dropping back in it. We very clearly lack a motor in midfield, but I can't see us getting one until we change the pattern of play, which is a CM who directs the play from the hole behind the striker. Maybe Lallana could fill that role eventually, although I'm not sure. It seemed to be what we borrowed Guly to do. That is reportedly the role he has played in Italy. I'm flabbergasted why we don't play somebody who's loan period runs out in January if we've got an option to buy. If we're not going to play them, don't bring them! Wilkins' playing him LM was either idiocy or deliberately designed to make him look bad. In spite of that he showed that he was able to work the defense the couple of time he was given the ball in the right areas. I wouldn't be surprised if he has lost interest now, anyway. A thought went around up in the Kingsland: Is Butterfield a much better RB than James used to be?

What starts to dawn on me, regardless of who was right or wrong in the past, that this squad might not at all be as strong as we liked to think. There are players in it who I have never seen playing a game which was so good so that they looked like CCC material, which should be equal to winning this league. Jaidi, Seabourne, Hammond, Puncheon, Connolly, for instance. And I still keep worrying about Davies on crosses. If that is so, then I'm afraid that there is quite a re-building job in front of NA. To me promotion is not necessarily everything this season, but I would like us to have become a really competitive team which can be relied on to perform week in and week out, and all but guaranteed to beat the bottom sides every time.

I like your analysis, Shurlock. For the first time I now understand why we kept buying fullbacks and nothing else. It nevertheless doesn't feel like a convincing strategy if AP thought that the likes of Dickson and Richardson could provide the danger and unpredictability of Antonio and Waigo. If that is what they could have provided they wouldn't have ended up as fullbacks in the first place. That's the weakness in the thinking, not in your analysis. Having had a few nagging doubts especially through the spring and early summer I also wonder if the team actually is as good as we thought it was? If our best performances last season was the team playing at it's very peak then it is childish to believe that such a level of performance can be retained game after game. In Hammond, Puncheon, Jaidi and others we have players who far too often don't come up to the heights they need to be to provide a threat at a higher level, and therefore for winning this league. We may well have deluded ourselves.

What a difference now that he has had a couple of nights sleep. No more rambling, repetition and endless sentences. The guy is very personable and clearly knows what he is here to do. At the same time he doesn't intend to give anything away. He is clear, though, that the most important relationship is the one between him and the chairman. I like him and hope that he will be very successful here.

Welcome to Saints Nigel! I'm looking forward to seeing some exciting and intelligent football and you will have done everything I hope for if we don't go to the bottom teams in the spring and lose pathetically. If you can make Saints a really competitive team without regular nose dives you will have us behind you all the way. Good luck!

Couldn't agree more, Ron, the problem with these kind of principles is that they put you entirely in somebody else's hands. His club has had ample opportunity to negotiate compensation, and Adkins needs to decide, probably by the end of today, whether he is coming or not. If not Saints should move on for two reasons: Because Adkins decision making ability will start to look questionable, and secondly because there is, as we've expected for some time, a rather large re-building job to be done here.

I don't think anybody has got a plan at the moment, not with Dickson and not with anybody else either. Take Guly, for example. We have signed him on loan until January, so why not play him, and in the position he prefers? We must have bought him for a reason, and if we are to know whether we want to keep him or send him back we must let the bloke play, mustn't we? Dickson looked alright LM when Lallana wasn't playing, but followed on with a poor first half against Bournemouth at LB. That appears to mean that he is not to be given a chance again. I would have thought with Lallana out again and Puncheon not producing that he ought to be back in from the start. What is going on is daft and has nothing to do with good management of either staff or football.

I can't say that he has been on my radar up till now, but from what I hear I don't mind at all. The idea of a manager with a flexible approach sounds attractive to me, including one who likes to see football played. Like Dave says elsewhere on this thread, the old re-cycled, safety-first, 4-4-2 at all cost are not going to create anything new here, and will therefore not do in the long run. If the only thing different between the teams is the amount of money spent on the playing staff, then our beloved Saints will probably never do better than to try to hang in the PL with our finger nails. We have all been there before, and if we are really honest with ourselves, how enjoyable was it, really?

That is, of course Dave, that he will be told what the figures are that are under negotiation. There is always a problem with having strong principles in an unprincipled world. And for that matter, what is the "right" compensation for a manager/player/house/car? The right price tends to be what anybody is prepared to pay, compared with how desperate the buyer is to sell. All of these positions are like attached to rubber bands, and that includes Nigel Adkins's.

I think possibly Adkins has been a bit naive taking up the position of not leaving, on principle, unless the clubs agree compensation. S****horpe are desperate for him to stay and can therefore hold out for an unreasonable amount of compensation. In turn it means that they will retain their manager until they are ready to sack him. It's a very honourable position for Adkins, but he has made himself a hostage in the process.

I would hope so, Ron, regardless of the compensation issue, since I don't think he will have been too impressed by his chairman's behaviour.

And we would have known nothing of this if it wasn't for Wharton blabbering to the papers. I can't see that this was warranted. However, I can also hear from the Adkins interview, judging from all the repetitions, that we are talking about a few very fired people who slept little or not at all last night. I would have thought that people in exalted positions (chairman Scunny?) had the good sense of not making public statements in those circumstances, unless they are agreed. It's a terrible mess, but sifting through what we do know, and judging from Adkins personal comments, it doesn't seem that NC has done anything wrong. Why anybody would like a completely unproven manager in Shearer, I can't understand.

NC wants to appoint somebody for the long term, who is guaranteed to get us promotion this season and is young and english, and who isn't worried that Les Reed is holding the rains for his part of ship, which looks possibly larger than we thought. There are some contradictions here: Young and english doesn't guarantee promotion; success in L1 and even CCC guarantess nothing in the PL; and an established top class manager (O'Neill for instance) is unlikely to tug the forelock to Les Reed, to say the least. A young, up and coming, english manager reminds of times gone by, when it was always the hope that somebody more or less unknown was to produce untold glory, hence the 13th manager... Such a manager would need a large shoulder to lean on, and I am unconvinced that this would be Les Reed. It's therefore guaranteed that whoever gets appointed will not tick all the boxes. What does disappoint me is that the succession wasn't sorted before the axe fell. I felt certain that it had been.

With the reference to Fred West I must note that Branfoot seemed a very nice guy when I met him, and that he made me a cup of tea! Still a rather awful manager.

I've just watched a team with a crisis of confidence, and trying toreplace it with desperation. Again, though, it wasn't different from Plymouth and the Orient, it is just getting increasingly desperate. The tactics remain those of an ineffective steamroller. It isn't working, and I don't envy Wilkins trying to deal with this on a short term basis. Saying this, his changes in the second half looked like those of a desperate caretaker manager as well. For individual criticism I must single out Puncheon. Finally played on the left he nevertheless showed such an aversion to try to get to the byline so that it amounted to rebellion. Together with getting himself into trouble most of the time for not releasing the ball and being unable to hit a cow's whatnot with a banjo. I also think that Lambert must reasonably still be carrying his injury, since he's hardly a shadow of his old self, and in spite of a lot of industry Connolly isn't looking like scoring today or any other day. The next manager has got a lot to sort out in super short time if promotion is to be achieved. So far we have demonstrated relegation form, but it isn't very surprising. Since the beginning of pre-season we haven't prepared ourself for building confidence by winning games, and there were a few of us that worried about that. We are therefore again in a situation where somebody will have to do it all again without the benefit of a few friendlies. We shouldn't be in that situation a year on, and I do think it is something that AP is responsible for, and can't understand the idea that everything was fine until he was sacked. What, for instance, is the purpose of the singing in the Northam? There isn't anybody believing that he might come back, is there?!

I was just going to say that, Dave, when you got in eight minutes ahead of me. To start with DW needs to get left footed players on the left and right footed on the right. Lallana is a special case, since you can't argue with his 20 goals coming in from the left, but I would have thought that he would be 'sussed' by now and steered on the outside by the fullback on every occasion, which would rather nullify him. Do Prado belongs in the middle, and if he didn't know it he should have seen it in about five minutes. He showed talent in working the defense when he had the chance, and with 39 games for Cesena last season he must have qualities. Schneiderlin was exceptionally week on tuesday night, and ought to have been replaced. I'd love to change the whole way we play, but in DW's shoes, and waiting for the next gaffer to come in, I would resist to make radical changes, and just limit my input into putting the right shaped pegs in the holes, which he should well know how to do with his experience.

There was no difference between the way we played against Swindon and the way we always play. With two "wrongfooted" wingers we are trying to overwhelm the opposition, and that is about the long and short of it. Since this is the only thing they have to plan for I'm not surprised that we have been found out and can't do it anymore. It is a very unsophisticated way to play football these days, and Swindon did what they should have done, since they aren't a bad team. One has got to ask oneself how we never get into the box for free headers or to complete a cross, when it keeps happening to us. This loss shouldn't have been a cause to start singing Pardew's praises either at SMS, or on this forum. It ought to be clear that it is the other way around: He's gone because we play like this, and not for the first time. If I was Dean Wilkins I don't think I would change much, since the new manager is likely to have very different ideas, but I would without any hesitation play left footed players on the left and right footed on the right, (and let the new guy worry about Lallana, who might be the odd one out, when he comes back in a few weeks time), and have the good sense to see that Guly is a central midfielder, and play him there. He has just played a year at the top of Serie B and gotten Cesena promoted, so he must have very useful qualities for League 1. Let's try to understand how we can use his qualities rather than to expect him to do something different. Saints have done this to new players so many times through the years, and then sold them on without getting the best out of them.