... or is anybody else seriously worried where the club is going under this c**t?
He inherited a squad that had plenty of quality in certain areas but lacked in other parts i.e. height, strength and leadership straight down the spine of the team. Since then nearly all the better / good players have either been under performing/under motivated, bombed out of the team or sold, or a combination of the whole 3, to be replaced by a load of rubbish that Adkins has brought in. None of them have been a resounding success, many of them have been down right awful but it looks as though now the club's hierarchy are trusting the future of the club in the hands of someone who is pushing out good players and replacing them with crap.
This is what happened with Haslam in the late 70s and early 80s and we ended up going down 2 levels to the fourth division. Where do they stop with Adkins, sack him when we're in the Conference? Get shut and get shut now McCabe before this gets really ugly.
Forget the interviews, forget the cliches, forget the results and to an extent the performances. Look at whats happened in two months. I think Adkins has finally started to make some progress/ grow a pair of Bollocks. If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, perhaps before Burton at home, I did wonder the same. Even bringing in the Psychic, Baptiste, I wondered what he was doing wasting money on a loan when he had a squad of youngsters to pick from in a lost season.
However, Baptiste coming in, Whiteman, Reed, Flo all contributing to a seemingly improved midfield, Collins (and hopefully JCR) going out and changing the set up to suit the players we have rather than the ones he thinks we have are all contributing a more optimistic Blade.
Of course, I’ve not watched us play in a month, so the games over easter will perhaps change my view, but my view at the moment is that he’s making the right changes and perhaps tearing up the boardroom model.
Since Burton, since McCabe spoke out at the unrest, since the awful transfer window in January, I get the impression something has gone off behind the scenes and not negatively. I’m not creating a rumour here, but surmising from the above that perhaps the rhetoric that Adkins was given in June last year that it was all Clough’s fault has been discussed. I get the distinct impression that Adkins briefing was that ‘whatever Clough did, undo it’. Its not being disrespectful to Adkins, I believe that he was under instruction. He gets Diego, Sharp, Woolford permanently, but the club were selling Murphy. The rest would be loans, including Sammon. He had a framework to work within.
What I think has happened is that Adkins has perhaps been asked whats going wrong and he’s turned around and said “lets do it my way”. What he’s done is root out the remaining trouble causers, brushed aside the fragile players that can’t string together a few games , regardless of potential talent and tweak things. Of course there are still boundaries, he’s been pushed to play some of the kids too, but he’s picking the right ones by the looks of it.
I’m in no way calling Adkins a mastermind, he has steered us during the worst season in my memory, but sinking to 13th in League one has awoken a few people in the club. Yes Adkins has had quality and talent in the squad that he inherited, but James Wallace, Baxter, JCR, McNulty were perhaps hiding behind reputations. Someone mentioned last week that Hammond will be pissed off that Whiteman has come in and shown him up. I’d say that the likes of Wallace, Baxter, JCR, McNulty, Diego and Collins will be looking at themselves and asking more questions. As Warnock used to say, footballers will always blame someone else, never themselves.
Adkins is far from perfect, but I think things are now changing. This summer needs a focussed approach. Reputations secondary, desire to play for a team the priority. I think Adkins is grasping this. Forget his clichéd interviews, step back and look at what has been done in the last 8 weeks. I’d say we’ve made more progress in that 8 week spell than the 8 months before.
