Every time I dare to criticise Saints Im accused of being negative, nothing could be further from the truth.

Too many people dont seem to understand what the true meaning of negativity is, they mistake any sentence that isnt gushing in its praise as being negative, but in the context of moving the club forward in the right direction, actually gushing praise itself could be considered a negative effect in monitoring and maintaining the Club's progress.

This is because it fosters a viewpoint where as there is no actual target, progress and indeed success cannot be measured properly, thus those that utter them have only two default views, the first is complete satisfaction and the second complete despondency, when in reality the position will always be somewhere in the middle.

Over the past two seasons in my reports and verdicts, i have always set out to be positive in that from the very start i have qualified what I deem to be the targets for the season, from a playing side that has always ben fairly simple, the overall target is to gain an average of two points per game, thus meaning that if we do that and achieve 92 points then we will almost certainly be promoted, as literally up till the last stage of the season its hard to be exact, its important to know what has been needed before and set this target realistically and i believe in doing this I have.

Even this grand total can be broken in two in how its achieved, again having looked at league tables over the years a promoted club in the Championship will need to win around 17 or 18 home matches and 8 -10 away it can also afford to lose no more than 6-8 games all season usually split into 2-3  at home and 4-5 away, as i have said its not an exact science, but in each and every year these totals havent been far off what has been needed. That being the case both need to be monitored closely and kept on track.   

But in life to achieve your overall aims you have to take little steps and monitor your progress at points along the way, that is why i have always maintained that as a guide we should always be looking at current form and how we ave performed in our last six matches, if we are maintaining that two points per game then all well and good especially if we are exceeding it, but if we are not getting that total then we have to look at trends and analyse why.

Allof this is no diffferent as to how the modern day football manager will plan the season ahead, I am not pretending this is all my own theory in any way shape or form, having read the thoughts of managers and coaches, Im merely passing that on.

This is why I have expressed concerns about the away form this season, we have already lost almost as many as most promoted clubs usually do, indeed both QPR and Norwich only lost that number all last season, if we want to stay top we have to keep getting those two points, at the moment we are still narrowly there, but that is with winning every home game, can we keep doing that ? well its never been done in hstory, so the answer is probably no, that being the case then we have to counter balance that by improving our away record.

In modern football, managers and coaches use a whole lot more statistics than these simple figures, but Nigel Adkins will measure the progress on the pitch in just this way and indeed has spoken before of the need to maintain two points per game average and also his concerns about the away form, so when i express the same concerns am I being negative ? if i am then so is the manager.

Perhaps the only difference though is I can say where i feel its going wrong publicly, whereas the manager has to keep most of his thoughts to himself on individual players or errors to maintain team spirit.

So to recap, when I question the teams playing record, I dont do so randomly or just on the basis of one result, I do so on clearly defined criteria that doesnt change throughout the season, at least perhaps not till the final games, when exact points totals become clear.

Having established those parameters then negatives can be turned into positives very easily, but perhaps more importantly dramas dont become crisis's or perhaps more importantly they done become perceived as crisis's by the supporters, because they know and understand what the aims and targets are both in the short term and overall.

For a manager its what drives his team forward and his motivation for his players, the league is littered with bad managers who blow up at the slightest bad result, but the good ones instill into their team what the targets are, how they are achieved and more importantly how and when they are measured.

So a positive thinker will know what we are aiming at, he will also have the confidence to criticise and take criticism against those measurements, IM sure Nigel Adkins will have some frank team meetings where statistics like this will be discussed frankly, but the players know where they stand from the start so these meetings to a casual listener may sound negative, but in reality they are turning those negatives into positives.

As I have said these thoughts are not my own, they are gleaned not just from reading the articles on how top coaches and managers work, but indeed how top business works, in any business resting on your laurels is a sure way to head in only one direction, the top business's and football clubs are constantly striving to keep moving forward and improve areas of that business that are lacking, in no business meeting will "But we are top" be accepted as an excuse to brush a set of poor results/sales under the carpet, declining results are never acceptable to any business and football should be no diffferent.

So when you read the match verdicts on here, before you post the "enraged from Bitterne" type of comment, look at what has been written and consider whether what I am saying is outside of those targets set at the start of the season ? will a given result have pushed us down the form table  etc ?

Of course everyone wont agree with my individual assesments of a game or players, but that is the beauty of football and why we love it, the diversity of opinions and i have always said I dont always thing mine is the right one or better than the next man, all i claim is that i have tried to make it based on certain criteria and that it is mine.

After all we all want the same ending at the end of the season and just because something sounds negative it doesnt mean that it is, every defeat can be used to turn the next game into a victory if we learn our lessons from it, every negative can be turned into a positive !                        

Photo: Action Images

Fordy added 10:10 - Dec 9 You can find whatever you want from statistics. Comparing our away form to QPR and Norwich's from last season is a bit pointless without comparing the home form as well. I think more worrying than the results has been the performances in recent weeks. We seem to have lost a little bit of our zip from early season. Let's just hope it's temporary.
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SaintNick added 10:16 - Dec 9 this wasnt an article comparing stats, the qpr and norwich figures were being used to emphasise why we need to have set targets, the hoome form is exceptional, we cant improve on it only remain the same or get worse, sorry but you are doing just what the article has said made things into negatives, by using the home form/we are top excuse to gloss over an area of concern and that in business terms is negative thinking

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Fordy added 10:53 - Dec 9 It may not have been an article comparing stats, but you did compare stats. I don't really think most Saints fans care if our away form is worse than QPR's last year. Yes, it needs improving, I think everyone knows that but I would be happy if we finished top of the table at the end of the season with a 100% home record and distinctly average away record.
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Scummer added 11:00 - Dec 9 Positive criticism is always worth doing, and I totally agree with almost all of the points that you made. The home form must improve or we will relinquish our hold on the top spot and probably an automatic promotion place. In that respect there is absolutely no questioning the logic. However, I do sometimes read this site (and I do read it daily) and hope that none of the Saints players ever read it. I don't think there is much difference in the targets that you, NA and the rest of us are hoping that Saints hot this year, but NA has impressed me with the group ethic, club positivity and ability to spot the issue and tweak / train to overcome and constantly improve. All players have a dip in form, but Nigel seems to have the ability to take the raw material and improve it technically, physically and mentally. Not a done deal and there are more areas to address, but he is the man for the job. You can almost rate the best Saints managers by a) those who made good signings, b) those who made those signings great and c) those that can do both. WGS was similar in that he took a lot of the good squad that Hoddle largely put together and made them a better team, and the same is true of Pardew and Adkins.

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SaintNick added 11:42 - Dec 9 Fordy you are still missing the entire point, you are still saying i dont care about anything other than the number of points we have now, or indeed at the end of the season, come the final reckoning all that will matter is points totals, but in order to get those you have to deal with problem areas, your logic is based on us winning all our home games, if wwe take our current points average per game over the entire season we will end up with 96 points, that will mean automatic promotion, but if we say narrow that down to the last 12 games to give a more accurate picture of our current form then that picture changes dramatically, we have played 6 at home and gained 18points, but away from the six games we have gained only 5, less than a point a game, .83 to be exact. Take that a step further, if we can keep up our 100% home record then we get another 39 points but keep up this away form we get only 10, this in reality doesnt mean too much change in points total it brings us down to 92, but it makes promotion less certain. If we then say win 10 of our remaining home games and lose 3 (extreme i know) that would then give us a total of 82 points and that would probably mean we would be in the play offs not automatic. Sorry to be so complicated, but your logic is based totally on winniing every remaining home game, the reality is that we probably wont, so we therefore have to improve that home form. Last season we won 12 on the road of which 9 where after the new year, so that shows its not desperate yet, however the task this year is a lot tougher. Scummer is spot on, its all about improvement and that includes a manager knowing just when he has the best out of a player and when he needs to replace that player with someone better

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eusebio added 18:02 - Dec 9 "The home form must improve or we will relinquish our hold on the top spot and probably an automatic promotion place." Is this the bit that scummer is spot on about.....just I'm not too sure how you can do better than win all your home games.
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Scummer added 09:13 - Dec 10 @eusebio: Yep, it has been a decent effort to win all of the games so far, but I have been disappointed that the goal difference from the home games has only been +20. Only joking, yes, I meant the away form!! Good spot...
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