Saints have a distinct advantage next season.
The Championship is a strong league over the past few seasons and is a very difficult one to get out of, relegated clubs on the face of it have the upper edge initially in that they are still in receipt of parachute payments and therefore have a lot more money at their disposal, but when you look at the stats that show that only around a quarter of clubs relegated from the Premiership bounce straight back, then it proves the theory that being succesful in the Championship is more about having stability and the right manager, rahter than wads of cash to throw around.
Of course cash helps and the clubs that have bounced straight back have tended to actually be the same ones, Birmingham, Wolves And West Brom spring to mind, all clubs that have tried to build in stability rather than pay stupid money to players that brings financial ruin when relegated.
So in getting promoted having a stable club is perhaps the biggest plus followed by a good manager who has built a solid playing squad and then finally havng a litle bit of money at your disposal, last but not least is possibly having a good hardcore support to enable you to be finacially viable and sustain your promotion push.i
If you gave a rating to these attributes and accepted that clubs with say an 80/100 score have a good chance of being in the promotion frame, then perhaps 14 of the Clubs in the Championship could claim this and this shows the size of Saints task if they wish to be up in the top half of the table let alone push for promotion, but given that these attributes arent something that you can quantify or guarantee easily, all clubs can do is try and get as much in place as possible and then hope for perhaps the most important attribute of all, one that we havent mentioned yet and that is luck.
The Championship more than any other is a manager's league, by that i mean that you can have most of the atttributes but if you havent got a manager who knows how to get the best out of players and run his squad then you are at a disadvantage, take Dave Jones for example, for six years he has been there or thereabouts for Cardiff City the best he has managed has been play off runner up in 2009/10.
So looking at all those attributes you have to say that Saints would score highly in all departments at present and added up this would probably give them a higher score out of 100 than just about any other team, it would certainly whittle out a fair few of those 14 aforementioned clubs.
We have stability at the club both on and off the pitch, we have a good manager who has at his disposal a playing squad that has both quality and quantity, we hopeflly have a little money at his disposal to fund a couple of key signings and we have a hardcore support that should be in the top 6 in the Championship next season probably higher.
This just leaves the unknown quantities, but in Nigel Adkins we have a manager as good as most in this division and it all now boils down to him not only making the right tactical decisions, but buying wisely and hopefully getting that luck, as a club we have ticked all the attributes that are quantifiable and thats a good sign, the signs are that in Adkins we have a solid leader who can take us forward another level.
Make no mistake its going to be a hard division next year and we should not expect to walk to promotion, it may be we need another season of getting that stability and experience, but I do genuinely feel that we score over our rivals in all areas and thats a good head start before a ball is kicked.