Saints on the march

Wednesday, 17/08/2011

by Chris Rann, Shoot's Southampton blogger

Saints are traditionally poor starters. Even in last year's promotion season it took them a fair amount of time to get going, in fact they were in 22nd position when Nigel Adkins rolled into town.

Luckily for Saints, Mr. Adkins is paying little to no respect to Saints negative traditions. Five goals against potential promotion contenders Ipswich at Portman Road last night made it three wins out of three in the Championship for Southampton, the first time in 23 years that they have achieved such a prosperous start.

In fact, their run is far better than even nine points in nine suggests, it is their fifth successive away league victory, and equates to having dropped just four points from the last possible 54.

Drastic squad changes haven’t been made, Jack Cork, Steve de Ridder and Danny Fox have come in, but only Cork has made an impact on the starting 11 so far, and momentum and continuity are surely playing their part.

An incredibly fit looking squad, including a lean Rickie Lambert, and a revived David Connolly have pulled the strings in every game so far, Adam Lallana playing the role of talismanic puppet master.

Saints are playing pretty football with deadly intentions, and at this juncture should fear nobody. With strong rumours of a big striker signing before the transfer window shuts, it could be about to get even worse for our Championship rivals. But don’t get me wrong, this league is going to get tougher before it really gets going.

As a Saints fan it would be easy to get carried away, we are usually at the bottom looking up at this stage of the season, and it is almost uncomfortable to be this confident going into games.

I keep thinking their will be an official announcement from the Football League to say that the nPower Championship will be starting again, as they “weren’t ready”.

So can Saints keep this up? Inevitably no they can’t, no team can win every game, but I think the rest of the league might be getting the message now that we haven’t come to make up the numbers.

One thing that is for certain, under Nigel Adkins, this Saints team isn’t going to be a walkover for anybody…

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