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I was one of Southampton’s biggest critics when they sacked Nigel Adkins at the start of this year.

Nigel had taken the Saints from League One to the Premier League with successive promotions and was making a real fist of his first season in the top flight.

I couldn’t understand why that wasn’t good enough for chairman Nicola Cortese, especially when he then recruited Mauricio ­Pochettino, a young Argentine coach whose grasp of English was comparable to my fluency in Spanish.

How wrong was I?

I wasn’t the only one, of course. Many Southampton fans also thought Mr Cortese had lost the plot. Yet, 10 months on, the Saints are flying high in the Premier League.

They have won at Anfield and drawn at Old Trafford – and are playing a brand of football that is as technically proficient as anything you will see in the division.

I like to think of myself as being an innovative coach. But I am also a bit of a magpie when it comes to picking up tips and ideas from other managers.

Pochettino’s high-pressing, high-tempo approach is ­something that I have been watching with interest. His team has a lovely balance.

Southampton may have shattered their transfer record four times in the last two years bringing in players like Jay Rodriguez, Gaston Ramirez, Victor Wanyama and Pablo Osvaldo. Dejan Lovren, an £8.5million signing, has also been outstanding at centre-back.

But they have retained an Englishness to their line-up.

Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert and Nathaniel Clyne have been bought to play alongside a homegrown pool of talent that includes Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw, Jack Cork and James Ward-Prowse.

For me, Lallana has been one of the best players in the Premier League this season and it can only be a matter of time before the Saints skipper follows Lambert into the England squad.

Southampton may not have the same depth of squad as teams like Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham and the two Manchester clubs.

But I am hoping that they stay injury-free, because their ­re-emergence as a club provides a lesson to us all.

(Image: Getty Images)

Remember, it was only four years ago that the Saints went into administration and League One. The way that they have reinvented themselves is proof positive that dreams can still come true in football.

Adkins still deserves a huge amount of credit for ­masterminding successive ­promotions to the Premier League.

But so does chairman Mr Cortese. The decision to make a managerial change last January could not have been easy. He must have known it was going to bring him plenty of grief.

I have discovered myself in recent months that making the right decisions doesn’t always come easily.

Mr Cortese had the courage of his convictions – and Southampton are now reaping the benefits.

As I have looked back on my reign as Crystal Palace manager over the last week, I have come to realise that Southampton should have been our model.

Yes, they have splashed the cash. But at no point have they overstepped themselves. The pace of change has been manageable over three or four years.

At Palace, we tried too much too soon – and something had to give.

That ­something, just eight games into the season, was me. Paolo Di Canio suffered the same fate at ­Sunderland.

The two clubs who made 10 or 12 changes to their first-team squads during the summer now occupy the two bottom positions in the table, and have already implemented a change of manager.

I still think that Sir Alex Ferguson was right when he said in his new book that the most important person at any football club is the manager.

But having a chairman with a viable, long-term plan is just as vital.