"pottechino is a seriously quality coach who had to continually sell at espanyol"





He had them bottom of the table before his sacking. The new manager has lifted them up the table with the same group of players.

And even if he's a fantastic manager he will still have problems from the start because he can't speak English.

id say about 2 years ago he would of been picked up by a top club had they not had to let the likes of callejon go.
espanyol had to sell their best 2 defenders the season before when he really made an impact.

things have been steadily declining because they cant afford it.

as long as southampton can replace the quality players they sell with decent types they will do allright.

no manager can really work miracles with the type of stuff pottechino has had to deal with.

Totally unrelated but the sacking is another daft decision after the nonsense of ditching the traditional red and white stripes for a "more fashionable" all red shirt.  Can you imagine Newcastle doing the same?

buzzer
Date Joined: 05 Jun 04
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18 Jan 13 14:10
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Their cup run was ended by a regional third-division side and that set the template for the horrendous year to follow. When a hapless, hopeless Real Zaragoza beat Espanyol 2-0 in Barcelona, coach Mauricio Pochettino described it as "a little accident" a minor blip. It was not.

Espanyol tumbled down the table to finish 14th and the Argentine was fortunate not to join the twelve top-flight coaches who lost their job last season, his team were crude and he had no idea how to halt their slide. His side were 18th in the fair-play table, with more yellow cards received than any other club.

Espanyol's youthful beauty had been replaced by a snarling beast who did not know how to lose gracefully.

The new season did not bring relief as they picked up just two points from their opening seven matches and sat bottom. By the end of November, they had managed two wins from 13 games and remained 20th.

Crowds in their new, 40,000-seat stadium tumbled from nearly 30,000 a year ago to just 15,500 for one league match. The Blanquiazules have 21,000 season-ticket holders - over 5,000 of them decided that they could not be bothered to attend games they had already paid for, the football was awful.

The beleaguered club once heralded as a role model for a medium-sized operation were falling apart. Just 7,463 watched a November Copa del Rey game against Sevilla. They lost 3-0.

The president departed and Pochettino was finally dismissed in November. Replaced by former Mexico and Atletico Madrid coach Javier Aguirre, fortunes finally began to improve. Espanyol drew his first three matches and held Real Madrid away. Then they beat Deportivo in their last match.

FFS

got to feel sorry for adkins , bad news for saints fans - hopefully everton will be first team to benefit on Monday night.

He's done well for himself seeing as he used to be the Scunthorpe physio!

The owners deserve relegation

wtf is all this about, utter *****

Disposing of the manager with the best win percentage in your club’s history, a man who has overseen consecutive promotions and who has lifted your club 48 places in the football league pyramid in just 26 months is certainly baffling.

Add in the fact that Southampton were on a streak of just two defeats in 12 games and it is perfectly possible to argue that this constitutes the harshest sacking in Premier League history.

The dismissal of Sam Allardyce at Blackburn also springs to mind but factor in the timing, Adkins’ diplomatic internal style as well as him being the choice of chairman Nicola Cortese and it really is difficult to think of a more bizarre decision.

Yet for all that, there will be only limited surprise today from those people who have actually worked with Cortese since he began running Southampton in 2009.

Alan Pardew, who himself was sacked by Cortese in 2010, says that he has never been pushed harder by anyone in football. Staff at St Mary’s also privately attest to his exacting standards.



Cortese’s vision for Southampton, quite simply, is to be a club pushing for European football and with an academy that is the very best in the country. That might all sound fanciful but the progress of the 3½ years is there for all to see.

His five-year plan for Premier League promotion was achieved two years ahead of schedule and a new state-of-the-art training ground is being built. Cortese can argue with some justification that, thus far, his major decisions have eventually all been vindicated.

Yet beneath the progress is an unpredictability and level of expectation that sometimes strays into the outright unrealistic.

Cortese had previously considered Adkins’ position after the defeat against West Bromwich Albion in November but, having resisted from pulling the trigger then, there was a general sense that the situation would not be reviewed again until the end of the season.

Even when reports emanated last night from Spain of talks between Cortese and Mauricio Pochettino, the assumption from well places sources around the club was that he was being sounded out for future reference.

It is all a massive gamble. Not because Pochettino is necessarily a poor coach but because he will inherit a squad in shock and a fan-base in revolt. Rafael Benitez would be the best person to advise Pochettino on the sort of welcome he can expect on Monday when he arrives for his first home game against Everton. Pochettino’s grasp of English - he needed an interpreter for today’s unveiling, also sets off alarm bells at such a delicate stage of the decision.

As for Adkins, sympathy is clearly due but his sacking may, in some senses, also come as a relief. With a contract that did not expire until 2016, he will walk away with a good pay-off and, above all, a reputation that has been hugely enhanced. It is more that can be said today for the club or its chairman.

really want them relegated now

There have been rumours all season Adkins would get the chop. In the summer they had approached Di Matteo to take the job and had he not had his contracted renewed by Chelsea Adkins would have gone then.

It seems very harsh on Adkins but obviously for whatever reason the owner didn't want him long term. The new guy says he knows the squad because he has been studying them for weeks so he must have been approached a while ago.

Southampton fans may choose to turn on the owner/ board but they should remember where they were a few years ago.

id bet good money this new bloke doesnt do as well as adkins

Biscuit, so did Paul Lambert. The difference between League 1 and the bottom half of the Premiership is negligible.

very very strange decision ,thought Adkins , was doing a great job there

Hamsterdam 18 Jan 13 16:45 
Biscuit, so did Paul Lambert. The difference between League 1 and the bottom half of the Premiership is negligible.



Nonsense

I have had a small investment on Saints to go down on the back of this.

New manager who does not speak English, players will be upset with Atkins going (might well get a couple of transfer requests?), supporters unhappy.

I think they could well be dragged into the bottom 3.

G1_Jockey_4 - it seems what you know about Spanish football (or indeed any football) could be contained within a postage stamp.

must be the biggest postage stamp in the world then.

Absolutely fcuking disgusting decision, and bizarre at that !!

Hope the Espanyol chap fails miserably ..(sorry southampton fans but whoever sacked adkins is pathetic)

Adkins must feel sick to his stomach

this looks like the work of a fifth columnist, sure the owner isnt a pompey fan ?