As daft decisions go this is up there with wearing a West Ham kit to a Millwall fans' event or opening up a tiger's mouth to see what its teeth are like for the craic. When Nigel Adkins took over as Southampton manager in September 2010, they were near the bottom of League 1 and just out of administration. A once-proud mainstay of English top flight football teetered on the brink of permanent ruin. The softly-spoken Adkins, a man who would remain optimistic if he was tied onto a platform drifiting head-first towards a circular saw, got the Saints promoted to the Championship eight months later. Within another year, Southampton were back in the Premier League for the first time since 2005, a tumultous season which kick-started the club's ugly descent into administration.
The pre-season verdicts were damning, as was the fixture list. The Saints would begin their top flight return with a trip to champions Manchester City, with Manchester United and Arsenal also among their first four opponents. Adkins kept faith with the bulk of the squad that had secured promotion, although the £10million addition of Gaston Ramirez was a real coup, especially as Arsenal and Liverpool had also reportedly been interested in the Uruguay playmaker.
Southampton stuck to their attacking principles, even having the audacity to take 2-1 leads against both Manchester clubs. Unfortunately they were more than a little suspect at the back and naivety cost them in those early fixtures, with the Manchester sides recovering to win 3-2 on each occasion. Arsenal then stuck six past the south coast club at the Emirates. Maybe the harbringers of doom were right after all, but Adkins didn't think so. He refused to compromise on his forward-minded approach and the Saints gradually got to grips with the defensive necessities of Premier League football.
On New Year's Day they were unlucky not to beat Arsenal and a fortnight later they came from 2-0 down to draw with Chelsea - at Stamford Bridge. With the likes of Newcastle and Aston Villa in freefall, and Reading and QPR with catching up to do, Southampton seemed to be in with a really good shout of beating the drop. Nobody told the owners, who this (Friday) morning sacked Adkins and brought in former Espanyol coach and Argentina defender Mauricio Pochettino.
If anyone can come up with a reason for getting rid of Adkins, other than the copy-and-paste BS trotted out by the club in an official statement, I would dearly love to know. This man got Southampton promoted twice in two years and had them competing well in the Premier League, while always demonstrating a commitment to attacking football and remaining positive in the face of adversity.
Naturally the decision to dispense with Adkins has left nobody happy. The man is out of a job. Southampton fans are up in arms over the board's decision. The reaction by neutral observers on the Internet has been fiercely critical of what has happened. Also it leaves a huge question mark over the Saints' survival prospects over the coming months. The flow that had been built up in recent weeks has been interrupted. Pochettino, who has done nothing wrong, will be behind the 8-ball from the word go and should his first few games end with poor results he will have the fans on his back. In short, the sacking of Adkins is scandalous.
And yet it is not an isolated incident. There is one obvious precedent, and a recent one at that too, which Southampton would do well to avoid. Only two months ago Roberto di Matteo got the heave-ho at Chelsea despite guiding the club to their first ever European Cup last May. The Blues had been in a sticky run of form at the time but Roman Abramovich's finger must have been particularly itchy to shove di Matteo out the door. The Italian was idolised by Chelsea fans, who weren't slow to express their anger at the dismissal. It got even worse when di Matteo was replaced by Rafael Benitez, a man who was hardly regarded as a deity around Stamford Bridge. He failed to win his first three games, two of which were at home, and even when he did record a victory, it was of little use as the European champions crashed out of the Champions League on the same night. Benitez has improved Chelsea's fortunes since then but he remains an unpopular figure among the club's supporters.
It is one thing sacking a manager when a team is clearly going nowhere fast and the man in charge has lost the faith of his players, the fans or both. It is another when it seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a brief dip in form and the manager is still adored by the supporters. Wolves got a lesson in that lately when the fans turned on Mick McCarthy, who was sacked and then watched on as they were relegated. He since took over at Ipswich, who went to a struggling Wolves side recently and won 2-0. The home fans, clearly realising that sometimes you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone, cheered their former boss while heckling then-incumbent Stale Solbakken - who, yes, has been sacked in the meantime.
This culture of impatience is long established in countries such as Brazil or Italy, where second place and last place are essentially the same thing, but it has seeped into English football in recent years and it's not good to see. People forget that football managers are people with families to provide for, not objects that can be used and abused as people see fit. While it may be a cliche, it is true - managing is a thankless job. Some players can get away with hardly trying a leg and they will still pick up their wages at the end of the week, safe in the knowledge that unless the transfer window is open and the club clearly doesn't want them, they can continue to saunter along half-heartedly. Managers don't have that luxury, despite having to bear a much heavier burden of accountability.
I would have liked to see Southampton stay up but I can't envisage a happy ending for them now. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe Pochettino will carry on the phenomenal work of his predecessor and keep the Saints in the Premier League. However, even if the Argentine does succeed in that mission, it will leave a bad taste in the mouth as Nigel Adkins, an admirable character who has proven himself in the deep end, has been the victim of the poisonous culture of sack first, think later.
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