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| (Courtesy of Will-Joel-Taylor - Flcikr) |
The Manager:
Nigel
Adkins has led the Saints to successive second place promotion spots in his two
years at the club and is held in very high regard by the fans because of this.
It is unlikely that we will be hearing loud sections of the Saint Mary’s crowd
calling for his sacking any time soon. However while a manager may have the
nous and the know-how to bring a team up through the divisions, sometimes it is
necessary to bring a manager in who has more experience of the top flight in
order to guarantee safety. After making the transition from physio to manager
at Scunthorpe Adkins has only been a manager for 6 years, never in the Premier
League, and this may count against him in the long run.
Will he
be the first manager of the season to be sacked? Only last night Adkins admitted that he was
the favourite to be sacked. This seems to be a strange thing to do, as managers
tend to be very sly when it comes to avoiding questions about their own
futures, either Adkins is being refreshingly honest or he is entering into mind
games with his chairman. Whatever way you look at it oddschecker.com shows us
that he is the most likely to be sacked, the best odds you can find for this
stand at 4/6. A rather large gap lies between him and the second favourite,
Mark Hughes, whose best odds are at 4/1. (Mancini is in third place at between
10/1 and 20/1, which is somewhat
laughable in my opinion, although it may not surprise you to know that I’ve
been wrong before.) As articulated above, Adkins’ lack of experience will not
make things any easier for him and with currently-unemployed former Saints manager
Harry Redknapp waiting in the wings apparently keen to get back into management
the Southampton board may have a ready-made replacement with a proven track
record of turning seasons round.
Does he
deserve to be sacked?
With a long view it’s hard to say that a manager who has led a League One team
to the Premier League in his first two seasons ever deserves to be sacked. But in the fickle game that is Premiership
football the achievements of previous seasons are very rarely taken into
consideration when a team has only got 1 win from 10 games and sits bottom of
the table. In short I don’t think that anyone would consider the Southampton chairman ridiculously unfair to sack Adkins
if things don’t change very soon.
The Team:
Key
Players: New
big-money signing Gaston Ramirez has yet to feature for a long run in the team
due to injury, however you have to feel that when he gets into his stride the
Uruguayan will prove to be a big boost for the Saints. Before making his move
to the red and white of the south coast Ramirez was being courted by much
bigger sides, only being put off by the hefty price tag for such a raw talent. His
performances during his two years at Bologna
yielded a goal every four games and saw teams such as Liverpool, Tottenham and
Inter make enquiries before he finally landed in Southampton.
He has already got a goal and an assist from four appearances for Southampton this season. Time will only tell if this was
money well spent.
Rickie
Lambert has been on decent form so far with 4 goals and 2 assists in 8 starts.
Unfortunately for Southampton he is the kind of striker that, while being a
very clinical finisher, is not capable of creating a large number of chances
for himself from absolutely nothing; like we see Peter Crouch do for Stoke,
Grant Holt for Norwich or even Peter Odemwingie for WBA as we saw for his first
goal last night. Lambert needs some good service, hopefully he can find this in
Ramirez.
Adam
Lallana may say that he couldn’t believe his England call-up but he has had a
reasonably good start to the season, especially considering the fact that he is
playing for the team currently sitting at the foot of the table. He has four
assists so far this season, sitting in joint fourth place of the assists table,
only behind Mata, Hazard and Rooney who each have one more than the 24-year-old
Englishman. Saints fans will hope that Lallana will be able to pull the strings
in midfield and guide their team to safety.
Players
who need to do better: Jay Rodriguez has only scored 1 goal in 9 appearances so far this
season and no matter what team you play for these statistics are not good
enough for any striker. He has played for a team who were at that time in the
Premier League (Burnley’s 2009/10 season) however didn’t making a single
appearance and was loaned out to Barnsley for
a short period. I find it difficult to see that this will prove to be a good
signing for Nigel Adkins, reportedly having cost a rather large sum of £7m for
someone with no top flight experience. His stats are average for a striker;
just better than one in four games throughout his career, but the strikers we
tend to see who make the successful transition from the second tier to the top
tier are ones who score bagfuls in the Championship; such as Kevin Phillips for
Sunderland, scoring 45 goals in 74 first division appearances. Sometimes, as in
the case of Robbie Earnshaw, even prolific scoring records in the lower tiers
don’t guarantee moderate success in the Premier League. In short Jay Rodriguez
seems to have been a bit of a fluff from Southampton and Adkins.
Rather than
just picking on one or two defenders to blame I’ve decided to take issue with
the whole Southampton defence. Conceding 28 goals
in your first 10 games back in the top flight is a sure fire way to buy
yourselves an early-bird ticket back down to the Championship. Something needs
to improve, perhaps some new faces.
Prediction:
Unlike
fellow strugglers QPR, who I looked at last week, Southampton seem to be
lacking real quality in all the major positions, with the possible exception of
Gaston Ramirez on whom the jury is still out. They are leaking goals and not
scoring enough at the other end and this is a recipe for relegation. Although
it is still early, and a decisive manager change or some key signings in
January could change this, I’m going to predict that the Saints have already
dug themselves into a hole that they will find it nearly impossible to climb
back out of. 20th
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