Perhaps Im being naive but if Nigel Adkins can survive November then perhaps Saints can stay up.

Bringing in a new manager usually signifies arrivals on the playing front, but at the moment Saints cant bring anyone new in till January, some two months and ten games away, it therefore at this present time doesnt make too much sense to rock the boat by sacking the manager and having a period of instability right in the middle of a very crucial month.

I feel it would be far better to give Nigel Adkins this month to try and salvage something from the situation, undoubtably Adkins needs to start picking up more points, but perhaps he will, with nothing to lose perhaps he will start to pick the right team for the situation which he clearly isnt doing at present according to some supporters who point to the continued use of Guly as an indication that Adkins has to play certain players.

Nigel Adkins is probably well aware that he is in last chance saloon, that being the case we might just see what he is made of, certainly his reputation is at stake here if he goes down with a whimper then many in football will question his integrity, but if he does thinks his way and gets results then even if the sack is the end result, there will be a queue of clubs wanting his talents.

From a Saints point of view it would be madness to sack a manager unless his replacement is signed sealed and ready to start work, when Pardew went this wasnt the case and a long delay before Adkins arrival saw two disastrous defeats against teams we really should have picked points up of, which made our task that so much harder come the end of the season.

If November is a disaster than I am afraid that we do have to consider that Adkins is really not up to the task, that he has had his chance, indeed more than a fair crack at the whip and that now is the time to go, in DEcember a new man will have time to make plans ready for the opening of the transfer window and can hit the ground running in January, so that makes sense.

Nigel Adkins has escaped the sack this week so far, it serves no real purpose to de stabilise the squad now, Im not one that cares for Chairmans votes of confidence or even set time scales to pick up, but I hope that in this alleged meeting between manager and Chairman that the reason Adkins is still here is that they reached real agreement on what is needed to see Saints through the next few weeks and that Adkins wont find himself sacked within days if a replacement is landed.     

Photo: Action Images

ExiledSupporter added 09:34 - Nov 7 The January transfer window may not provide the opportunity to restructure that it seems so many correspondents think will provide us with the opportunity to extract ourselves from the mess. Often the players available at that time are sub-standard (and we have enough of those) and anyway why does everyone think we will have the money available to make the signings needed after our lavish expenditure during the summer

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BITTERNEBOY added 10:15 - Nov 7 Absolute rubbish post just like the team You are clutching at straws just accept the fact that the powers at SFC have wasted £30 million and the manager is not at the moment PL standard so relegation is a formality
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SaintNick added 11:26 - Nov 7 We have only straws to clutch at at present, personally think we will have the money in January given the facility that we have set up to borrow against the tv payments in may, secondly i think 2 or 3 good signings in the right areas might just be the catalyst we need
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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 12:12 - Nov 7 Yeah of course they will spend in January. We're bloody loaded! I think we're only 2 or 3 signings away from being a decent mid-table Premiership side. If they can reinforce the defence and stop us leaking goals then we'll stay up. Michael Dawson, a left back and another centre back is what's needed! Keep Adkins in charge, let him spend in January, and give him the chance to turn things around. He can still keep us up. Up until January we've got to pick up as many points as possible with the players we've got. We can beat Swansea as long as the defence and defensive midfielders stick to getting the basics right and don't make any schoolboy errors.

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thegeneral added 12:22 - Nov 7 To play devils advocate a new manager now would at least have time to get a feel for the club, identify weak areas and start making January plans for the window. I do think we should stick with NA though and as i've said before i would prefer someone like Strachan as a director of football or some such title. I also think that believing the January transfer window will be our saviour is a little naive as we need more players than are likely to be available or willing to come to a struggling club and probably than we can afford. The sure thing is we have to have EPL experianced players so we could end up with mercenaries, journeymen and crocs. Relegation and a re-group wouldn't worry me as i've actually really enjoy us in League one and the championship because we won playing good exciting football, in the EPL we and about fourteen other clubs are making up the numbers for the top four or five teams, it actually gets quite boring. Look how close the championship can and has been. Also if we are so far ahead in the five year plan does it really matter? the big downside is we are likely to lose our best players such as lallana, lambert and ramirez

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IanRC added 13:45 - Nov 7 Don't subscribe to the view that Guly is rubbish, I think he has done as well as many. Fox on the other hand is a consistent disaster even though I take on board your comments about him needing more cover from midfield. Unfortunately morale has slumped and this has resulted in below par performances from even such as Lambert. Although we would all like to play attractive attacking football we looked most effective against West Brom when we went more route 1, I think because we have not got down the wings often enough to let Lambert play to his strengths. I am very unclear why we made such a fuss about Rodriguez and seem to want to build our team about him. He appears lightweight and tentative (like much of our defence). The fact remains however that as we saw in the early games against the Manchester sides we can play well against the best and I remain confident that we will survive once we sort out our defence. Also like to say that the support has been tremendous at the games, lets keep it up and see us through this rocky patch.

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kingolaf added 19:30 - Nov 7 My opinion is that Adkins is compounding our deficiencies with his playground tactics, poorly drilled defence, and players that frankly, don't seem that bothered about saving his job. The fact that a new manager can't bring players in until January doesn't dissuade me that Adkins should go. At least someone different could set us up better tactically, and get more from the players in the meantime.

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Whatsforpud added 23:51 - Nov 7 Just watched the second half of Celtic v Barcelona. Great defending from Celtic. That's what we need from our defence (and those protecting the defence). They had that "they shall not pass" attitude, throwing in bodies when necessary. We have to show that total commitment.
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stew1964 added 08:23 - Nov 8 Weve played 8 out of the top 9 teams right now, 5 away and 3 at home, thats a hard start for a team thats been out the top flight for years, i would like a couple more points out them games and a bit of luck we would have? i still have faith in N/A, i dont want to see 10 mangers in 10 years again,.
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