bricktop
Well-Known Member
Nigel Adkins was the best possible appointment we could have made this time last year, but his reign was disappointing, in fact the perfect word I can use to describe his reign is underwhelming,
I gave him the season before I started throwing my toys out of the pram, and I would have backed him to have the first few games of next season to see what he could have done next season, as I think he needed more time to display what he could do, but I also had began to have doubts that his summer recruitment might not be what we wanted and there can be no doubts that sacking him is the right thing to do.
He came in as a manager with a superb track record of getting out of this division, with an excellent reputation as a motivator, and finding players on a budget, I know a couple of Scunthorpe fans and they said he was an absolutely outstanding manager, Southampton fans also rated him highly, but he had a spell that had also been disappointing at Reading and that was the precursor to his spell at the Lane.
His mistakes had been numerous, right from the start. The first was Connor Sammon, my understanding that he was already a done deal under Clough and Brannigan, but he didn't even seem to veto this deal and unfortunately we was lumbered with an awful player all season, he also failed to act quickly to jettison some of the deadwood from the squad last summer when he had the chance, and decided to give them all a fresh start, but by doing that he was effectively starting with the same set of failures, and putting more pressure on himself by effectively gambling on his own managerial skills to get the best out of an average set of players without strengthening sufficiently to give himself a better chance of being a success.
Tactically he looked poor, he didn't seem to be particularly quick to change this tactically when things weren't working, his substitutions were often baffling, and he often seems reluctant to change formations and tactics during a match especially when things hadn't been working well.
When he did change his tactics they was often after a spell of poor form, and th season can be broken down in to thirds, we started the season playing an attacking passing game that actually wasn't that bad to watch when we playing well, but when results dipped he turned to direct, long ball tactics that was awful to watch but did grind out a few results, before ditching that and going for a 3-5-2 formation that was also clearly not the solution.
His forays in to the transfer market were sporadic and hit and miss. The only signing he made that could be classed as an unqualified success was the signing of Billy Sharp, he also signed the awful Martyn Woolford, Sammon was more or less here before Adkins came, Edgar was a direct response to the Gillingham hiding, and he spent too long trying to bring in Dan Burn and Dean Hammond, the latter coming in and being a poor signing, for several reasons, and near the end of the season he brought in Alex Baptiste who was a vast improvement on the dire Neill Collins who was jettisoned 30 games too late in to the season.
With the rest of players we still saw the rest of the same old failures, failing again. Only a couple of players improved last season and they was George Long and Che Adams, the rest either stayed resolutely mediocre or regressed badly. His team selections seemed to be random at the start of season, and that set the theme with players coming for a few games before being dropped, often never to be seem again, whilst others would get tried and tried again despite never improving or adding anything to the side, then there was the favourites who seemingly became bombproof despite turning in poor performance with an alarming frequency. The core of the players who ended the season had been the same set of players who has been paramount in the last couple of seasons of League One mediocrity, he can't solely place the blame on the players for his sacking, but towards the end of the season you certainly didn't a sense that they was fighting for the manager, but then again you haven't seen them fighting for much this season.
All season the results had been poor, I struggle to think of more than 1 or 2 games where I came out of the match thinking that we had actually played well, whilst we picked up most of our points in games where we really should have expected to win, whilst the poor results and performances are the ones that lingered on in the mind the longest. I don't want to be disrespectful here but there defeats against Gillingham, Bury, Colchester, Shrewsbury, Bury, Rochdale and finishing the season meekly surrendering to his old side Scunthorpe, were for frequent and were totally unacceptable for Adkins job to remain tenable. His pre and post match media work became more and more deluded to the point where people actually wondered what he was taking, a lot of was guff about showing endeavour, grit and determination mixed with sound bites such as 'pressure makes diamonds' and often you wondered if he had actually lost the plot.
The final straw came last Sunday, that was an absolutely unacceptable performance and defeat, and his thinly veiled attack on the supporters was the final straw. Thought the season there was a real sense that the United fans has given him time, and showed a lot more patience than a lot of other managers has been shown. We had continued to turn out in numbers, often with blind faith, and that level of support this season has been unprecedented and totally undeserved by the playing staff and management team, and the supporters had only really turned on that last day against Scunthorpe where the team rightfully got treated with a tumultuous mix of anger, apathy, and resentment as the frustrations of another bitterly disappointing season came to the fore, and we couldn't hide our disgust any more. Adkins aced all this by seeing through an completely pointless 'lap of appreciation' when they really should have cancelled it, I don't know what could ever be positively achieved, but by going on the attack, instead of being contrite and apologising for delivering a poor, poor season he had effectively signed his own death warrant.
At this conjuncture it can be hard to see how we proceed next, but it was made crystal clear for me with a couple of tweets from United player Wally Downes, where he stated that if Sheffield United attack and defend with purpose when the fans respond brilliant but when we play tiki taki football and try passing the ball off the park then Bramall Lane is like a library, he hit the nail on the head for me, but if Chris Wilder does come in, like has been widely speculated them I feel that is at least a start.
I've not written this as a personal attack on Nigel Adkins, for everything that went wrong I still believe he wanted to be a success and I think that he did everything he could to make his time at Bramall Lane a success but the crux of the matter is that for all his effort and 'endeavour', he just wasn't very good. That is why the club have done the right thing at the perfect time.
I gave him the season before I started throwing my toys out of the pram, and I would have backed him to have the first few games of next season to see what he could have done next season, as I think he needed more time to display what he could do, but I also had began to have doubts that his summer recruitment might not be what we wanted and there can be no doubts that sacking him is the right thing to do.
He came in as a manager with a superb track record of getting out of this division, with an excellent reputation as a motivator, and finding players on a budget, I know a couple of Scunthorpe fans and they said he was an absolutely outstanding manager, Southampton fans also rated him highly, but he had a spell that had also been disappointing at Reading and that was the precursor to his spell at the Lane.
His mistakes had been numerous, right from the start. The first was Connor Sammon, my understanding that he was already a done deal under Clough and Brannigan, but he didn't even seem to veto this deal and unfortunately we was lumbered with an awful player all season, he also failed to act quickly to jettison some of the deadwood from the squad last summer when he had the chance, and decided to give them all a fresh start, but by doing that he was effectively starting with the same set of failures, and putting more pressure on himself by effectively gambling on his own managerial skills to get the best out of an average set of players without strengthening sufficiently to give himself a better chance of being a success.
Tactically he looked poor, he didn't seem to be particularly quick to change this tactically when things weren't working, his substitutions were often baffling, and he often seems reluctant to change formations and tactics during a match especially when things hadn't been working well.
When he did change his tactics they was often after a spell of poor form, and th season can be broken down in to thirds, we started the season playing an attacking passing game that actually wasn't that bad to watch when we playing well, but when results dipped he turned to direct, long ball tactics that was awful to watch but did grind out a few results, before ditching that and going for a 3-5-2 formation that was also clearly not the solution.
His forays in to the transfer market were sporadic and hit and miss. The only signing he made that could be classed as an unqualified success was the signing of Billy Sharp, he also signed the awful Martyn Woolford, Sammon was more or less here before Adkins came, Edgar was a direct response to the Gillingham hiding, and he spent too long trying to bring in Dan Burn and Dean Hammond, the latter coming in and being a poor signing, for several reasons, and near the end of the season he brought in Alex Baptiste who was a vast improvement on the dire Neill Collins who was jettisoned 30 games too late in to the season.
With the rest of players we still saw the rest of the same old failures, failing again. Only a couple of players improved last season and they was George Long and Che Adams, the rest either stayed resolutely mediocre or regressed badly. His team selections seemed to be random at the start of season, and that set the theme with players coming for a few games before being dropped, often never to be seem again, whilst others would get tried and tried again despite never improving or adding anything to the side, then there was the favourites who seemingly became bombproof despite turning in poor performance with an alarming frequency. The core of the players who ended the season had been the same set of players who has been paramount in the last couple of seasons of League One mediocrity, he can't solely place the blame on the players for his sacking, but towards the end of the season you certainly didn't a sense that they was fighting for the manager, but then again you haven't seen them fighting for much this season.
All season the results had been poor, I struggle to think of more than 1 or 2 games where I came out of the match thinking that we had actually played well, whilst we picked up most of our points in games where we really should have expected to win, whilst the poor results and performances are the ones that lingered on in the mind the longest. I don't want to be disrespectful here but there defeats against Gillingham, Bury, Colchester, Shrewsbury, Bury, Rochdale and finishing the season meekly surrendering to his old side Scunthorpe, were for frequent and were totally unacceptable for Adkins job to remain tenable. His pre and post match media work became more and more deluded to the point where people actually wondered what he was taking, a lot of was guff about showing endeavour, grit and determination mixed with sound bites such as 'pressure makes diamonds' and often you wondered if he had actually lost the plot.
The final straw came last Sunday, that was an absolutely unacceptable performance and defeat, and his thinly veiled attack on the supporters was the final straw. Thought the season there was a real sense that the United fans has given him time, and showed a lot more patience than a lot of other managers has been shown. We had continued to turn out in numbers, often with blind faith, and that level of support this season has been unprecedented and totally undeserved by the playing staff and management team, and the supporters had only really turned on that last day against Scunthorpe where the team rightfully got treated with a tumultuous mix of anger, apathy, and resentment as the frustrations of another bitterly disappointing season came to the fore, and we couldn't hide our disgust any more. Adkins aced all this by seeing through an completely pointless 'lap of appreciation' when they really should have cancelled it, I don't know what could ever be positively achieved, but by going on the attack, instead of being contrite and apologising for delivering a poor, poor season he had effectively signed his own death warrant.
At this conjuncture it can be hard to see how we proceed next, but it was made crystal clear for me with a couple of tweets from United player Wally Downes, where he stated that if Sheffield United attack and defend with purpose when the fans respond brilliant but when we play tiki taki football and try passing the ball off the park then Bramall Lane is like a library, he hit the nail on the head for me, but if Chris Wilder does come in, like has been widely speculated them I feel that is at least a start.
I've not written this as a personal attack on Nigel Adkins, for everything that went wrong I still believe he wanted to be a success and I think that he did everything he could to make his time at Bramall Lane a success but the crux of the matter is that for all his effort and 'endeavour', he just wasn't very good. That is why the club have done the right thing at the perfect time.
