Booker4
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Maybe I'm too harsh on Adkins, I probably am. But can't say I'm willing to look back on his reign (given how it petered out so pathetically) with any sort of generosity.
Of course, there's truth in what you say. But, within the parameters he was working in, did he really do enough?, was he anything like proactive enough? I don't think so.
I don't believe the maxim "nice guys can't succeed" in football (witness Ranieri for e.g.). But nice guys need a nice environment. And his attempted creation of that nice environment was to bring his mates in to surround himself with a comfort blanket, rather than tackling problems head-on. Adkins didn't have the steeliness needed for a seriously tough job, with a depressed & disaffected fanbase, & a playing staff that didn't have enough respect for him.
Yes, he was landed with players who weren't good enough, who were getting payed too much, who were in far too much of a comfort zone. Why not make an example of one or two of them though (like Clough did with Collins, say)? Why not criticize poor performance, rather than endlessly justifying & excusing it?
He avoided problems (including trimming the squad), rather than tackling them. With the shameful end result that United finished 11th in Division Three.
Guess we'll never know how much effort he made to getting the squad down, particularly in the earlier days. By the time he realised what he wanted squad wise (probably about November) he was trying to shift people on but he was only really able to do this post January.
Adkins was too protective of the players I agree. He could have criticised performances not individually but as a group and he didn't do that enough to the fans, but he did always say what was said to the players stays in the dressing room, but that meant we have no idea if he was rollocking them or not. Adkins didn't seem to be able to motivate the players in my view, not like Bassett and Warnock could. He's gone now and I think we can all agree we've got a fantastic replacement, who is already sorting out the mess left over, largely from Clough's reign.