Author: JPN

Writing book reviews and anything else that forces me to resort to the medium of keyboard tapping.

Fans help a team but they can’t transform it

Returning to Bloomfield Road has brought hope both long and short-term hope to Blackpool fans. In the long term, their re-entering the stadium as one harmonious body gives them hope of a brighter future, but in the short-term, it was the hope of many their long-awaited re-occupation of the thousands of redundant tangerine seats could inspire a late-season charge into the play-offs.

The former is still very much a possibility, but the latter two games into the return looks less likely.

It seemed logical for fans to look at the Seasiders’ league position of eighth after playing in a virtually empty stadium every other game and think ‘just imagine how well we can do with the supporters back’.

But the two home games, as joyous as the atmosphere in the stadium has been, have yielded just two points and the reality of the team has been born out to the supporters.

Blackpool are a very consistent team. They have developed a habit (out of necessity over the past few seasons) of blocking out all external factors and playing more or less at their potential. They have not been outside the top ten since the first weekend of November, but they have not been in the top six all season. They are the lowest scorers in the top half of the league and have drawn the second highest number of matches – only Sunderland have managed more than the Seasiders’ fourteen.

The evidence supporting all of these facts has been on display at Bloomfield Road in one way or another in the two games against Southend United and Doncaster Rovers.

Terry McPhillips’s team are a solid, committed League One outfit and a tough nut to crack for any side at their level, but by the same token, they also lack the goal-scorers and creativity to make them a real powerhouse in the division.

Looking down the Blackpool team sheet the number of bonafide goal threats can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. Armand Gnanduillet, though by no means the perfect centre forward, will always make life difficult for the opposition with his physicality and is the focal point of the team’s attacks, while Liam Feeney possesses the trickery and final ball befitting of a player who has played at a higher level. The others, unless the ball lands on their head or foot at a set play – as was the case with Michael Nottingham against Doncaster on Tuesday, scale fairly low on the menace factor.

Jay Spearing, is the team’s heartbeat and rarely wastes possession but those in front of him in the midfield are workmanlike and lack the guile to exploit the creative freedom the ex-Liverpool’s man’s presence at the rear of the midfield should give them.

The team is crying out for the sort of creative midfielder who demands the ball and looks to dictate a game in the way Wes Hoolahan did the last time the Seasiders were promoted from this level. But on the evidence of both the Southend and Doncaster games, they do not appear to boast such a player within their ranks. That is why, for all the long overdue excitement surrounding Blackpool and all the noise of their supporters, they look unlikely to find that extra, play-off-making gear.

 

Blackpool aren’t perfect but it’s good to have them back

The first game at Bloomfield Road of the post-Oyston era was always going to be a day where events on the pitch were overshadowed by the wider significance of the match to those off it and so it proved as the Blackpool fans had the first and final impact on a day that always going to belong to them.

That said, the game was not without its drama and supporters returning to Bloomfield Road for the first time in four (or in some cases five) years to create an atmosphere reminiscent of their days in the Premier League were soon reminded of the club’s more modest standing in the football pyramid these days when Southend headed in an opener from a corner.

The goal came against the run of play, Harry Pritchard having already forced visiting goalkeeper Nathan Bishop to tip a shot bound for the top corner over the bar.

The goal quietened the home crowd for all of two seconds before they launched back into their post-Oyston themed version of Herman’s Hermits I’m into Something Good which provided the soundtrack to most of the afternoon.

Buoyed by the home fans’ defiant response to the unscripted opener, the Seasiders pursued an equaliser and when Liam Feeney provided a rare moment of composure on an afternoon ruled by freneticism and adrenalin they had it.

The winger drifted in from the left taking several Southend players with him enabling Armand Gnanduillet to occupy the now vacated space, Feeney rolled the ball into the Ivorian’s path and the striker smashed in the goal most inside the stadium had been waiting four years to cheer.

The home fans raised the decibel levels once again and the players charged forward in search of a second before the break, but a bobbling pitch put pay to any hopes of cohesion in attack and the football became increasingly slapdash as half-time approached.

Southend, stubborn in their role as party-poopers, retook the lead within three minutes of restart from another corner – the sort of near post header that is either “well-worked” or “poorly-defended” depending on which side of the dugout you sit.

The home supporters continued to sing, the home drum continued to beat and the home players continued to be tenacious in their efforts to cap a joyous day on the Fylde coast with a victory.

But the game grew ragged as the tangerines switched from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2 and looked to long balls, crosses and long throw-ins for a route back into the game.

There had been a brief moment in the first half where Blackpool supporters had sung the name of former French playmaker Ludovic Sylvestre and as the game wore on those who had done so were probably bemoaning the absence of a player of similar guile among the current squad. No tangerine-shirted player seemed willing to occupy the sort of positions in front of the penalty area where Sylvestre once thrived and as the visitors’ back five dealt with each ball into the box with relative comfort, the Blackpool supporters’ homecoming looked destined for defeat.

But Feeney with the calmest head and deftest feet on the pitch had other ideas, embarking on one final surge down the left and floating over a cross that was flicked on to the head of Southend substitute Taylor Moore, who became the most popular man in Blackpool for a few minutes, diverting the ball past his own goalkeeper.

Bloomfield Road roared its approval, some fans ran on to the pitch and everyone of a tangerine persuasion left the stadium with the smiles that had been etched across their faces when they had arrived, still intact.

The fans had returned to watch their team and unsurprisingly they were still Blackpool. The departure of the Oystons does not make them immune to conceding from set-pieces against the run of play or misplacing the odd pass any more than it stops a ball bobbling on an uneven pitch. But regardless of their imperfections, it is safe to assume that all the home supporters left Bloomfield Road with one overriding thought: that it is great to have their team back.

Blackpool FC: Back from the fires of hell

For more than three decades one name has been synonymous with Blackpool Football Club and as is the case with most clubs who have found themselves in crisis at some point, the name does not belong to anyone who plays football. The name, in the case of Blackpool Football Club has been Oyston. A name that thanks to a High Court ruling last month which put the club into receivership, has now finally had its ties with the North West club severed.

While Blackpool’s supporters rejoice the departure of a name so despised that most felt it necessary to abstain from watching their team until such a time of removal, those looking from afar may be wondering quite what all the fuss is about. Blackpool are eighth in League One and only four points off the play-offs, what’s the problem?

Neutrals may remember Blackpool’s endearingly chaotic Premier League season in which they scored 55 goals, conceded 78 and went down with the often survival-worthy total of 39 points. But so what? Can Blackpool realistically expect to be in the Premier League?

All but the most fanciful Blackpool fans will answer ‘no’.

Then what is all the fuss about?

The answer lies not in Blackpool’s descent down the football pyramid but in the manner of it. It is quite conceivable that Blackpool with what the rest of world might describe as ‘normal’ owners could have dropped down to League One from the Premier League, the days of Stanley Matthews when the club won an FA Cup and battled Matt Busby’s Manchester United for the league title were long gone even before the Oystons arrived. But had more amiable, if fallible owners been in charge of the Seasiders in recent years, then it is safe to assume that the majority of the fanbase would have not deemed it in the best interests of the club for them not to do the one thing all football supporters love: go and watch their team.

Though football is a business, supporters are not regular customers. They do not flit from club to club as grocery shoppers might do between Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Aldi. They are pretty much the most loyal consumers a business could ever hope to have and as long those in charge don’t throw faeces at them, the chances are they will keep coming back for more.

Sadly, in the case of Blackpool FC, Owen Oyston and his son Karl did the equivalent and much worse, leaving supporters with no option but to suppress what to many, was the habit of a lifetime.

Among the Oyston family’s worst crimes (the entire list is too long for any article) was Owen Oyston paying himself an annual salary of £11million following the club’s relegation from Premier League; being frugal to point of insanity in the transfer market so that two weeks prior to the 2014/2015 campaign the club had just eight registered players; and in the case of Owen Oyston’s son Karl and his grandson Sam, continually goading fans both in person and on social media while tipping barrel loads of oil on to the bonfire of a club they had created. Supporters who retaliated were sued by the Oystons, who threw their financial weight behind legal proceedings with the manner of bullies in the playground, while most of the supporters untouched by their owners’ wrath looked on in horror, decided enough was enough and vowed never to set foot in Bloomfield Road Stadium again until the odious family was gone.

For the next four years Blackpool, with virtually no supporters attending home games and the Oystons clinging to power with the sort of stubbornness characteristic of all despots, the club entered a state of hell, from which many feared they may never return.

As the Oystons continued to burn the club to the ground, many supporters laid their hopes at the door of one man who they believed could rescue their club from the flames: Valeri Belokon. A Latvian businessman whose investment, beginning in 2006, dragged a rudderless Oyston-run ship from League One to the Premier League in four years, Belokon was yet to receive any return from the Oystons on the investment that had spearheaded the Seasiders’ unlikely rise to the top flight and it took only the most fleeting of glances at the club’s accounts to see where the money had gone.

As things soured, some hoped Belokon would buy the club out, while others feared he would simply look to claim the return on his investment and disappear forever, leaving them lumbered with the Oystons forevermore. He did neither but did not forsake the club and following the lead of the boycotting fans, refused to lie down and showed a willingness to fight the Oystons that ultimately rid Blackpool of their tyranny.

Belokon took the Oystons to court seeking to reclaim the return on his investment and won. In November 2017 a High Court ruling ordered Owen Oyston to buy out Belokon’s shares in the club for £31million and fourteen months later having not paid a penny back, he departed the club in the only way he was ever going to: he was dragged from it.

So Blackpool and their supporters are back from the fires of hell. But what now?

The future is uncertain and new ownership once the receivers find a suitable party holds no guarantee of success.

But after what the club has been through, to an extent this doesn’t really matter. Blackpool may never reach the Premier League again, they may soar back there within three years, they may bounce aimlessly around the lower leagues for the next thirty. But whatever they do from now on, at least they should now do it with supporters in the stadium and the best of intentions.