Disclaimer: I'm sorry if the translation is not as good as it should be, I was in a hurry but wanted to post the English version of the article.
Not in every single time that when a manager gets the sack or leaves by his own will and the reason isn't professional the team necessarily suffers bad karma. Marcelo "El Loco" Bielsa left Lazio two days after he signed for the Italian club because he didn't get what he was promised in the matter of transfers from the owner Claudio Lotito. Simone Inzaghi the less bright brother on the pitch took the hot seat and to this day he's the brighter Inzaghi on the sidelines. Even here in Israel Haim Silvas did a decent or even pretty good job as the manager of Hapoel Ra'anana but he got the sack. The team didn't suffer bad karma and a failure of the next manager because the next manager in this bizarre case was Silvas himself. Back to Bielsa who went to Lille and like always got in a dispute with everyone at the club and got the sack not long ago after the team sitting in the lower part of the table but Bielsa has "a name" in the football world, he has prestige. although he failed in a lot of his recent jobs he'll find a new one, like every genius he's also crazy, but what about those who won't recover from such experience? The second article in the series and this time – Nigel Adkins.
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| "El Loco" Bielsa sits on his coffee as the Marseille manager |
August 2010, the chairman of Southampton Nicola Cortese showed the door to the manager Alan Pardew after he failed to lead the team to the playoffs as the team finished one place below the sixth and last place that leads to playoffs. The official statement said this act was necessary for the club to achieve its well-known targets. "If you go back to the beginning of the season, Southampton were probably not in a much different position than Norwich or Charlton, with the difference that we started on minus ten points; but Norwich or Charlton had no money to spend in the window. We all know what we spent. Now we are approximately 30 points behind Norwich and 20 points behind Charlton. I think that gap is simply too big" (said Cortese), a similar thing happened after the team fired Nigel Adkins in January 2013, this act of the club got the name of: "Harshest sacking in the history of the Premier League". The latest got the sack after he promoted The Saints twice in a row and held the team in the 15th place in the Premier League. Pardew once addressed about his time in Southampton under Cortese as the place he got "pushed" the most.
The story isn't as simple as it might seem. In July 2009 the team did very bad financially wise and started the league with minus ten points. The team rescued from dismantling after the Swiss businessman Markus Liebherr bought the club. From the beginning, the latest said that his target is to lead the club back to the Premier League. In August 2010 before Pardew's sacking, Liebherr passed away from a heart attack but the team kept under the control of his family as he made sure even though he was in the team for a short time that even if he won't be alive the team will keep striving to achieve the target above. Although the team had a bad start for the season and got knocked out of the cup the fans believed Pardew with his attacking football is the right man to lead the club onward, especially after the tragedy that hit the club, but as said earlier Cortese thought otherwise and he signed the rising manager Nigel Adkins.
Adkins was born at Birkhead (Merseyside) played as a goalkeeper in his short career of 13 years. He played for Tranmere, Wigan and Bangor City from Wales. He started his managerial career at the latest and won the league twice before he left to Scunthorpe from League One to work as a physio. In November 2006 Adkins got promoted to be the caretaker manager after Brian Laws left the club. Adkins got the job and a full-time contract less than a month after he took as caretaker the fans instantly fell in love: "Who needs Mourinho, we have our physio!". In his four years at the club, the manager led the team to the Championship twice the first time as champions of League One was after 40 years that the team didn’t participate in the second division. The second time the club got promoted via playoffs but managed to stay in the Championship and not get relegated back to League One right away.
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| Is it me stabbing your back or I'm just happy to see you? Nicola Cortese |
At this point, Southampton comes in and after the team comes to an agreement with Scunthorpe about letting Adkins go to Saint Marry he takes the place of Alan Pardew. Adkins joined the team when it was sitting in the lower hand of the League One table but soon enough, in November the team was in a place that leads to the playoffs. From this point the team started galloping and after setting a record of least conceded goals, knocking out Blackpool who played in the Premier League from the FA Cup and just celebrated on the pitch with attacking and attractive football. Adkins recorded a third time in his career when he led a team to promotion from League One. The things kept going as well as they did before, the season in the Championship started with the club breaking 12 years of not winning in the season opening day and had their heads high after winning 3-1 against Leeds at St Marry's. The team was promoted to the Premier League in the last game week with a home record attendance.
Even in the Premier League, the league of the "Big Teams" Southampton didn't cease to impress, at the opening day the team saw the champions Manchester City having a sweaty win after The Saints held a lead of 2-1 until the 82nd minute. Adkins once told to the press that he likes to recite "The Guy In The Glass" by Dale Wimbrow, it helps him to manage stress. Until the 10th game week, the team that sometimes impressed (against Villa, City, United and Tottenham) but sometimes fell of its legs (Arsenal, West Ham, Wigan) had only four points. But somewhat surprisingly in the next 12 games that were the last games of Adkins on the lines the team lost only twice and won four times and as said above sitting at the 15th place, but it wasn't good enough for Cortese.
The Italian wanted more so he thought to sack Adkins a fan favourite and probably the most sympathized manager in the Premier League In that time and getting in a manager that never had any experience in the English football and his main connection to English football is a tackle he made on Michael Owen during England-Argentina game. This man is Mauricio Pochettino. The disappointment of the fans and the press went silent like it never happened, Pochettino finished that season leading the team to the 14th place. The next season he led the team to the top-half 8th place when two of the three signings having a big part in the team's success – Dejan Lovren who came from Lyon and Victor Wanyama who came from Celtic (and Dani Osvaldo being Dani Osvaldo). Back to Adkins who didn't stay jobless for a long time and in March, he took the seat at Madjeski Stadium of Reading. Adkins couldn't prevent the team from relegating but it was clear that the goal is to return to the Premier League as soon as possible. In The first full season, Adkins saw how Reading misses the playoffs by one place. On the season afterwards Adkins got sacked on 15th December when the team was ten points behind the play-off places which isn't such a big gap in the Championship, but a horrific game against Birmingham where the team lost 6-1 probably was the last straw.
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| Liebherr |
Adkins waited for more than half a year to be back on the sidelines and after the somewhat failure at Reading, he was able to find a job at the league where he made his name – League One. But even their things didn't go as well as they did at Scunthorpe or Southampton and Adkins who signed for Sheffield United kept snowballing downhill by leading the team to it's worst finishing since 1983 by finishing 11th in the league. It's not surmising that this "achievement" led to Adkin's sacking from the team and no one could remember how beautiful of a story and progress Adkins had not long ago. Meanwhile, what happened at Southampton? Pochettino left for Tottenham after his amazing first full season at St Marry. He led the North-Londoners forward and he's considered to be one of the rising and even best managers of modern football. His successor Ronald Koeman fulfilled Liebherr's wish and led the team to Europe. The latest left to Everton and got replaced by Claude Puel who led the team to mid-table finish but lost his job after one season as the fans and the club officials didn't like Puel's defensive football. Today the manager of the team is Mauricio Pellegrino and the team is sitting deep on the 18th place which leads to relegation but only five points away from 10th place.
What's going on at Reading? Steve Clark who succeeded Adkins didn't have a good time as the main man of The Royals and under him, the team finished on the bottom part of the table, 19th place. The next season saw four managers for Reading – Clark got sacked in December, Kuhl took place as caretaker before the man who led the team to the Premier League Brian McDermott returned to Madjeski who survived till May when the team signed their current manager – the cold-blooded Jaap Stam. The Dutchman led the team to the third place on the previous season and almost to the Premier League when the team lost on penalties in the playoffs final against Huddersfield. In the current season, the team doesn't remind for the slightest bit the team of the previous season and fights for the place out of the relegation battles. To sum up the things, one could say that after Adkins's tenure at Southampton they went upward for most of the time, where Reading had gone both upward and downward but the team that made the biggest rise after Adkins sacked from it was Sheffield United. The Blades were taken to the Championship by the lead of Chris Wilder who led the team to win the League One. The team started the season strong fighting for promotion to the Premier League and although there's a little decrease in team's performance lately its still possible that they'll finish in a playoff place.
So what's going on with Adkins? After more than a year out of sidelines, Adkins didn't free-fall like Pearson did and got a job at Hull City but it's not mandatory he'll stay there for long. Hull fight's for its place in the Championship, Adkins took the Place of the Russian Leonid Slutsky that couldn't settle in the English football but on the other hand he didn't have the terms to do so as the owner of Hull looks to sell the club and not investing a lot of money to improve the team. If Adkins wouldn't be in such problematic place in his career he'd probably wouldn't take Hull's seat. Right now the team sits in 21st place, one above the relegation zone when the biggest name that the team got in January was Liverpool's youngster Harry Wilson on loan. The club hopes the main striker Abel Hernandez will recover from injury the sidelined him since the third-week game.
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| Nigel Adkins signs for a young Hull fan |
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