Evo-lution + Cup Fever - the Mighty vs Scunthorpe United

Today, I want to see a *good game of football* -  that's a very old fashioned desire I know, but I yearn for the kind of thing that has some *enjoyment* to it. Obviously, I also need the Mighty Tangerine Wizards to be still Wembley bound by the end of it for it to be pleasurable. I don't expect every game to be 5-4 or owt like that, but it feels as if I'm particularly cursed by scrappy, unsatisfying, hesitant football this year. It's not just us (though it's mainly us) as whenever I watch a game on telly or listen to one on the radio, it never ever seems to be an end to end spectacular or a closely matched feast of football, but rather, the kind of attritional punch up where one fella wins because the other fella trips over his own laces. after they've traded a few half hearted flailing body blows in a drizzly grey backstreet by some overflowing waste bins... This, however, is the FA Cup, this is all or nothing, this is 'might as well give it a go' stuff. If I don't find some fun today, when will I?) 

Ian Evatt's at the wheel so there's something new to absorb. I wasn't really all in on Evo before he was appointed but it's lovely to hear words like 'detail' and 'clarity' coming out of the squad when they talk about the manager. He's spoken of 'fearless football' and whilst talk is cheap, he's already given more of an impression of intent and purpose in a few days than Steve, Steve and Steve managed in 3 months. I hope Evatt will take this game as what it is - a chance to win a game of football and potentially put a bit of glory and adventure back into the somewhat dulled recent reputation of Blackpool FC - we're literally the most 'cup' team you can think of, never mind being the victors in the most legendary cup final of all, we never win leagues, we always go up via knockout football. 

So today, lets get the ball down, play it forward, give our best and see what happens... 

---

Ian Evatt has picked a side with no midfield. Well, technically there's Lee Evans but some recent weeks, that would actually be -1 midfielders. I like it though. We've got the skillful players out there, two strikers and Evans to knit the defence to the midfield in a little hole of his own where he can do his own thing rather than shout at anyone else. 

We're dominant for the opening spell. Domination doesn't equal many clear cut chances and there's something a bit Critchball about how we're good at getting the ball up the pitch to the final third, but less good at turning that into an attempt on goal. Lets not be knobheads about it though, we're infinitely better set up and look like we've done something in the week that is loosely based on football as opposed to sat about doing Sudoko, picking wax out of our ears and playing darts whilst the Steves have several cups of tea and read the paper.  We move the ball about well, we look like we know where each other are and we're in command. 

The goal isn't a classic, in fact, it's a result of a bit of fortune as a long ball towards Fletch is missed by the big man (quell surprise!) but also by his marker and comes through to Scott Banks - he storms forward, fiddles it to Bowler who in turn fiddles it fletch who has shown alertness to get into the box quickly. There ain't nobody better than Super Ashley Fletcher and though, from a distance it looks like he takes two attempts to stab it home, stab it home he does. 

Cue rampaging waves of Tangerine pressure, evoking the golden era of Evatt's playing days... 

Maybe not. Cue us gradually losing grip of the game. Banks picks up the weirdest booking ever for catching a ball that is sailing over his head and out of play. Scunthorpe slowly being to come into it. It's not a tsunami of molten iron(s) but they force BPF to claim a few crosses, they win a few corners, they create a bit of havoc as Casey has to make a really sharp block at the near post after we get all mixed up and the ball is cleared back to them, just as BPF is about to fall on it and then they miss a really good far post chance where a looping ball finds a spare man. They're putting pressure on the carded Banks who doesn't look comfortable going backwards. 

What started as positive football has become the fragile Blackpool we've seen so many times in recent months. We do make a bit more though, Bloxham missing the best of our opportunities, slapping a chance teed up perfectly for him by Bowler well wide when a player not so desperate for something to happen for him might have taken it more calmly and at very least, worked the keeper. 

--- 

At half time, my main thought is that I quite like what I've seen but that we sorely miss a whippet of a striker playing beyond Ash Fletcher and really pressurising the defence. Bloxham isn't that man - he's definitely looking more like a footballer and less like labouring peasant from the middle ages trudging his way miserably back from the local well laden down with buckets - but he's not really a whippet with explosive pace and I think with one of those, we'd have likely carved them open more often. 

--- 

CJ is on for Banks which makes sense given we can ill afford another suspension. International football's CJ Hamilton is, however, not able to turn the flow of the game back towards us - in fact, Scunthorpe start this half very well, whistling a shot close by BPF's post almost straight away and working him several times after that. They're the side on top and we look flimsy and flustered. The nadir comes when (I think) Casey slices a backpass intended for BPF heavily and wildly and the keeper rushes to try and prevent a corner and whilst he succeeds in that, he only manages to push the ball back into the path of a Scunthorpe forward. Chaos reigns as BPF tries to tackle him like an outfielder, the ball is crossed, we somehow scramble it away without a keeper and then, just as the keeper returns we manage to hack it out of his grasp, back to Scunthorpe who nearly score possibly from a deflection off one of our players back into the goal. It's car crash stuff and it's in danger of undermining the positive signs we've seen. 

The ref isn't helping things, giving petty fouls and penalising us for breathing. A lone voice in the crowd forcefully accuses the ref of being a 'paedo' - which might be a bit harsh, but he's given some weird calls and this, for better or worse, is the sort of thing people will shout at you if you prance around making a show of yourself in neon blue lycra. 

Evo has had enough and makes sweeping changes, bringing on Coulson, Brown and Honeyman for Lyons, Hansson and Bowler. Lyons had a tough afternoon against an opponent who drew a foul every time the Irishman looked at him, Hansson had some nice touches when we were on top but looked peripheral when not and Bowler fizzled encouragingly a few times and showed willingness to block and chase but he's not catching fire and still seems to be missing the instant change of pace he had at his best. His quality is worth persisting with as you see in moments he's gifted beyond any other player on the pitch, but in others, he looks lost within his new role - but then, he was ever thus and my tangerine heart remains firmly set on the electric one. 

We are better for the changes. Firstly, we stop them coming at us and secondly, we get at them again. There's a gorgeously crisp set of return passes between Honeyman and Fletcher which are from a different level of football, there's several moments of Bloxham looking something like the Bloxham we want to see, fighting his way onto the ball, bearing down at goal, having a go and being denied. There's CJ twice running from deep and having a go at goal, one of his efforts hit like a rocket would have broken the net if a defender hadn't got in the way, there's an Ash Fletcher effort saved at the near post and another later one quite stunningly clawed out by the keeper who is falling and manages to throw his lower hand up and get a strong palm on it and there's Lee Evans hitting a free kick from about 20 yards out which seems for all the world to have gone in but somehow streaks by the post and smashes into the hoardings instead. 

It's not all us - Scunthorpe's fans are making a decent noise - there is a particular irony in them considering Blackpool a shithole and wanting to go home, but they back their side very well and they're nearly rewarded towards the end as the game becomes joyously (if a little unnervingly) end to end stuff. Casey is cynical as we get caught out and hacks one of them down in brutal fashion for the sake of the bigger picture. The ref/alleged nonce gives a yellow. This is exactly the game I wanted, (provided we hold out) - they give as good as they get in the latter stages, and the closest they come is a glanced free header which drifts a yard or so wide which really, they should have done better with. The last 10 or so minutes have become basketball and that's given what was really quite painfully sedate at the outset a good atmosphere and sated my desire for some football played for the simple reason that football is fun. 

Terry Bondo comes on and Bondomania grips the Kop. If Bondo scores... we're on the pitch. Sadly, we're not but the great man does manage a spot of shithousery in the corner in his brief but glorious cameo and we see the game out. 

--- 

Was it perfect - no, not in a million years? Were there still worrying things about us? Yep. 

Was it *better* though? 

It really was. The challenge Ian Evatt faces is huge. He's taking a side who are light years behind where they should be, ravaged by injury, with very few options and is basically giving them an in season pre-season as he attempts to solve the problems that we have - and those problems are pretty much everything about us. I've said this before, but it's not just my opinion that we were *shite* under Bruce, we were statistically, factually, undeniably dreadful at just about everything you can measure. We couldn't pass, couldn't tackle, couldn't defend, couldn't create. These are not my words Carol, but the words of 'Insufferably Dull Bottle Top Glasses Wearing Stats Nerd Who Has No Friends Other Than The Numbers Monthly' magazine. (5.95 at all good newsagents) 

What we saw today was imperfect, sure, but we saw a side that in reasonable length spells carved out multiple chances. We saw, at points, passing movements that lasted for more than 3 or 4 touches before we hoofed it long. At one point I counted a 25 pass move. So fucking what we went back to the keeper a few times. It's 2025 for fucks sake. That's what teams do. We played to a plan and when that plan stopped working, we rejigged it and played to a different plan. We showed some commitment, some effort, some character and we looked like a team who knew what we were expected to do individually and collectively. 

Is a narrow win in the first round of the cup against a non-league side (albeit a half decent one who I think could definitely hack Div 2 on this showing) the cure for all ill? Of course it isn't - but it's a step on a journey and the positives were there. Horsfall continues to make the decision to place him in a deep freeze pretty much as soon as we'd signed him look mystifying. Lee Evans played as well as I've seen him play in a long, long time today, he showed authority, he spread play beautifully at times, his set pieces weren't awful and he was vaguely reminiscent of the commanding player we last saw sometime before that Wrexham game in the fog last Christmas- long may that continue as I love this Lee Evans as much as the other Lee Evans has fucking done my head in for ages - perhaps something to do with having players in front of him moving as opposed to everyone squashed in deep. Tom Bloxham put in another shift and the effort and experience will do him good. BPF, (if you wipe out the corner prevention calamity) was solid Ash Fletcher continues to impress me as a striker/playmaker hybrid. Ashworth also, like Horsfall, played in a way that makes a mockery of his non-selection. The three later subs all added quality, Coulson will suit Evatt's style far more than playing as a tradition full back, Honeyman managed to start about three near fights whilst he was on the pitch which is exactly what you want him to do and Jordan Brown is just about immaculate and born to play in the role Evatt needs him to. 

Does that add up to 'being able to win every single game we play from now on and rampage to an unlikely promotion?' - I doubt it at this point- but we've at least added a bit more to the shallow foundations we've been digging since Bruce left, shown we can attack, shown we can battle and demonstrated, in two games in a row, that we can go up against an opposition, match them for effort and come out on top. A shockingly out of form Peterborough and Scunthorpe United of the National League aren't Cardiff City - but we've done some of the basics and after a season where we haven't done those things, I'm not fucking complaining at improvement, but drinking it in like cold iced water in the dryest of deserts.

Ian Evatt is not a miracle worker - he's a coach, a manager, someone working a process and for the first time in ages, I can actually see evidence of the manager's work on the pitch, that work resembles something from within the last decade of football thinking. Most positively, regardless of the individual weaknesses, the errors in execution, the missing attributes, there's a palpable buy in from the squad in trying their best to carry out the game plan. Running hard, putting in blocks, moving when we've got the ball... That's in and of itself, a massive positive and a thousand times more joyful that watching an out of form, confused looking, fed up bunch of players begrudgingly, sulkily and half heartedly carry out a painfully outdated and lazily thrown together undercooked mess that barely deserves the word 'tactic' applied. 

So yeah, I'll take today. Enjoyed it. 

Most of all though, I fucking love the FA Cup and we're still in the velvet bag. Bring on Round 2. 

You can follow MCLF on facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email If you appreciate the blog and judge it worth 1p or more, then a donation to one of the causes below which help kids and families in Blackpool would be grand.

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Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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Up for the Cup? the Mighty vs Scunthorpe Utd (terrible preview)

The FA Cup is a brilliant idea. You play a game. If you lose it, you're out and if you win you go through to the next round. There is nothing else to it. It's like league football - but better, because no matter how shit the game is, there's something at stake. 

Once you're out, you have to wait till the next season to play it again. There isn't a next week. If you keep winning, however, eventually you go all the way to that there London, for the final and if you win that, you get the FA Cup to take home for a bit with your ribbons on it. They even write your name on it. Forever. 

Lovely stuff.

Cup football used to be seen as the ultimate prize in football. The league was secondary - the sudden death nature of knockout football, the randomness of playing against whatever side came out of the hat creating a high stakes set of one off fixtures. It only takes 6 games to win it (8 for us in our temporary state outside of football's elite) but there's no room for any error. The belief was essentially, you can grind out a league title, lose a whole load of games along the way - but a cup win takes a certain character, a certain fearless approach (because after all, only wins will do) that is ultimately more laudable.

The league might be an endurance test, but there are second chances. Next week... You can finish lower than a team but beat them home and away. The league is a triumph of predictability, of organisation, of aggregated scores and totalled points. The Cup has a simple and gloriously appealing chaos to it. You don't know who you're going to play, but you know one simple truth - Win or you're out. Like a roman gladiator didn't survive a loss, neither does a football team in the FA Cup. 

The league's latter day supremacy is born of the modern age. Football is less of a game and more of a soap opera. Whereas the black and white era saw the cup as an exciting novelty where Sunday's backpage headlines could be written, the 21st century 24 hour media landscape needs reliable narratives that stretch over months and by its nature, the cup doesn't give that. As it progresses, it gets smaller, there's literally less teams, less players, less matches. That doesn't suit the way modern football is a packaged and presented, nor does it appeal to the accountancy that drives modern clubs - even a tepid league season has a guaranteed set of fixtures - the cup only promises one game - anything more is down to performance on the pitch and the fickle nature of football fate 

If (to pick the current 'crisis club' of the moment) Liverpool lose in their first game, they're gone. After that first event, there's no scope for further attention, no picking apart their ongoing travails, no narrative of redemption versus further fall possible - they're out, gone, finished. It's over, till next season. Attention must fall elsewhere. It doesn't matter that there's a global audience of Liverpool fans hungry for more Liverpool content - they're dead and the team that beat them carry on forward, regardless of whether that's what the world wants to see or not.  

The cup doesn't speak to the modern obsession with prize money either. Win it and it makes very little difference to the balance sheet (certainly not for a Premier League club) so it's not important in terms of the breathless way that both top flight and Champions League football are celebrated for their revenue earning potential and their ability to finance spectacular deals that again, add to the narrative of the TV game. It matters far more to the lesser names in the draw than the bigger ones and that rubs off on fans who see the cup as some kind of inconvenience, a pointless set of games that don't speak to the true glory of football - the accruing and subsequent spending of wealth. 

The FA Cup is still resolutely old fashioned in the way that, a few million quid aside, the main reason to win it is, you get to climb the steps of Wembley and all cheer at the same time as your captain lifts the cup. It's about the spectacle, the moment, the glory. Unlike almost everything else in football, you get nothing for second place. There's no European also rans mediocrity league where you get to beat Lithuanian or Turkmenistani teams for fun for the semi finalists, no second chance play offs for the team that went out in the quarter final. It's simple. You win it, or you lose.

Whether it's by accident or design, I like that it still is essentially the same competition I recall as a kid, still essentially the same competition (give or take replays) that is pictured on grainy historical footage or ghostly, foggy pictures. from the very beginning of the game. It's never been seeded or had a group stage, or been reimagined as an invitational mini league to be played over the summer break in Dubai. It's knockout football and round 3 is in January when it's cold and muddy. 

Let's just fuck off reality and pragmatism. Don't sigh. You know it makes sense. If you're dragging yourself down to Bloomfield Road or Glanford Park on even an occasional basis, you know that reality and pragmatism would really tell you just to give up. So surrender yourself... 

If James Husband lifted the FA Cup, it would be unreal. It would be the moment of a lifetime. You'd literally never, ever feel anything like it again. CJ running about with the lid on his head. Fletch doing a dance with it, cheeky Albie Morgan pouting champagne into the cup... It's that exciting a thought, it makes me feel a bit breathless just to think of it. For all the miserable fucks bemoaning the FA Cup 'not being what it was' just imagine the dizzying, nauseating, pulsating tension as the minutes tick down... Imagine the roar of the final whistle, the sweat, the relief, the sheer insane release of it all. Can you even begin to contemplate the build up to the cup lift? I can't. I don't know what I'd do. Cry? Dance? Faint? - it would be the play off finals and more. It would be like completing life somehow.  

It's possibly, very probably, almost certainly not going to happen... but it just might... this is the glorious mental trick the Cup plays on us. Win a round and for a blissful short time, you're in the draw, opponent unknown and anything and anyone might come next... the draw might be kind, you might get that bit further, you might just reach a point where you start to let yourself dream about the impossible. Even if the biggest team comes out, you give yourself a chance... For fucks sake cynics, this is a season where Grimsby (that's the actual Grimsby) beat Manchester United. That literally happened. This season. It was great. 

Maybe the cup has lost its lustre but, I say, that's just some truism that you can ignore if you want. If you don't care about the cup, then you won't care about the cup. If you decide to care about it, then you will care about it. Just because it's not top priority for those weird armchair watchalong Premier League fans who shout about 'net spend' and 'PSR' or the myriad of random foreign financiers in the boardrooms of the top clubs or the TV executives who've grown fat on the Premier League's week in week out reliable glamour doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, doesn't mean you can't care about it. In fact, it's probably reason you should - because what they want and what you want aren't the same thing. They want less clubs and more big games and less relegation and less inconvenient fixtures and all of that...

Therefore... Stop being miserable cunts and get up for the fucking cup because its here and it's a fleeting chance at glory. Fuck having what we value dictated by others, get knocking up your tinfoil trophies and get down to Bloomfield Road to wave them at the telly because actually, the truth of it all is - you can throw as much prize money and TV cameras at a thing as you want - but it is the supporters who actually make the spectacle and it's up to us what we choose to value. If we want knockout football where only winning matters, then we've got some right here, right now and we can embrace it if we choose.

We're playing Scunthorpe on Saturday. It's fair to say that more glamorous opponents exist in world football- but at this stage of proceedings, Scunthorpe aren't a bad side to get in terms of a decent potential spectacle- they're in really good form, they'll bring a load and they'll make some noise. We'll have to turn up to get a result. There's no point in either side playing for a draw either. It's knockout football.

For us, there's players returning from injury and the first home game of a new era, Ian Evatt back at Bloomfield in the home dugout. After a season of abject disappointment, Evatt's seaside homecoming could be the perfect exorcism of the undercooked, predictable, stodgy and highly unsatisfying football we've seen thus far. A one off cup game offering an ideal opportunity to display the 'fearless' approach the new man evoked in a series of really positive interviews. 

Saturday could be tremendous. We could pack the ground out and give Ian Evatt a brilliant welcome and then bask in the rare experience of watching a game where the stakes are absolute. Win and we're 7 games from triumph... Lose and it's over for an entire year. 7 games in the league is a trudge to mid December. 7 games in the cup is a death or glory sprint to May sunshine and Wembley way...

We can be mealy mouthed about the cup and treat it with the same confused disdain that executives at elite clubs treat it - "it's really not valuable. the prize money is hardly worth getting out of bed for" or we can embrace it as the possible start of a tremendous adventure.

What other competition could give you a broadly equal chance of playing against a part time side on a ground not much more than a park surrounded by railings, or a visit to some spaceship beamed from the future like say, the Tottenham stadium to play a team of multi-millionaires?

We've been stuck in the third tier for what feels like ages (it's only 2 and a bit years somehow...!) I'm bored of playing the same teams. Away days have a certain predictability to them after a while in the same division. The cup offers an escape from this, offering as it does, the prospect of playing either clubs like Woodley Sports, Merthyr Tydfill, Hampton and Richmond or Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal... Scunthorpe themselves even - a side we shared championship status with when Ian Evatt was a player for us and who since have fallen as far as the 6th tier, suffered horrendous ownership nightmares and for whom the relative sterility of our (more recent) past would seem like glorious stability. 

Every day of every week, you have the endless stories about the minutiae of the Premier League and the elite clubs around the globe plastered all over everything. We're just an afterthought. Blackpool, Scunthorpe, every other shit town team who hasn't been bought up by a global star or global finance power. We're distant, removed, at arms length. A mere provincial backwater in an era of city dominated, heavily financed elites. The FA Cup is the great leveller, even just as a dream. It's the annual anomaly where everyone, great and small, rich and poor gets chucked into a velvet bag, shaken about and drawn out.

Anything can happen in 90 minutes.

The road to Wembley begins this Saturday at 3pm. Starting point - Bloomfield Road. (Just hope that this season isn't the year that Scunthorpe win it...) 

Onward!

You can follow MCLF on facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email If you appreciate the blog and judge it worth 1p or more, then a donation to one of the causes below which help kids and families in Blackpool would be grand.

Home-Start Blackpool Food Bank

Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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Cursed - the Mighty vs Wycombe Wanders

I'm starting to think that there's very little point or purpose to all this other than some kind of sick joke to amuse the unknown powers behind the universe. There's been a lot of speculation by various civilisations over the years as to why stuff happens and what it all means. Moral codes dictated by oldl Fellas in clouds with beards, zenshit and robes, elephant headed dudes with loads of arms, gods on Greek mountains and all that stuff. I'm not sure any of them are a thing. I don't know... Like a stoned student, I feel like saying 'what if we are all living in a simulation maaaaaan.'???? 

That argument is a logical dead end. It's unprovable. We MIGHT indeed be living in a simulation (maaaan) but there's no way of knowing, so it's not really worth talking about. Put down your spliff, switch off your TV set, do something less boring instead etc. 

Except, I think I've stumbled across the evidence. Whilst post 18th century liberal thinking would have us as all special and unique beings, with complexity and beauty, I think we're literally just numbers. I'm not talking of the mystery of DNA (what is it, where does it come from, why do we go to such lengths to pass it on)  -  I actually think we're all merely the attendance figures generated by a game of Football Manager and 'god' such as they are, is a PNE fan who has decided to tinker with the game editor and subject Blackpool FC to as much painful and tortuous misery as he can this season. There's something so wilfully cruel about the way each paper cut is inflicted that our bleeding out seems like it can't be merely self inflicted. The universe hates us. I do not exist. Reality is a sham. This is probably what I have to tell myself because right now, if they bulldozed the ground and stuck up a Wickes or something instead, it feels like it would probably do my mindset some good overall. 

Half time, I'm sharing a rare bit of (very) cautious optimism. We've not been 'brilliant' or even 'pretty good' - we've been 'alright' (ish) and we've been on top (sort of). The stats are fairly even in terms of chances, but Wycombe's big moments have come largely from our mistakes and we've, for the first time this season, put in a half of football where we've looked vaguely coherent. We've pressured a bit, we've pressed quite well (relative to 'not pressing at all'). We've been in their half more than they've been in our half. It makes some sort of sense to see the players on the pitch in the places they are playing. We've had some crosses! Some passes! We've managed some moves where we retain the ball! We haven't simply panicked and banged it long (well, not every time) Stop the press, tell the world... the Pool are going up etc!!! 

The goal feels loosely speaking, deserved. We don't always make the most of good positions (in fact, we look quite blunt in that regard), but to be honest, for most of the season we've not made good positions at all so lets not get sniffy about 'quality in the final third' because, fuck me, we've got into the final third and that's a start. It's a taken really well by Fletcher (there ain't nobody better, cos they're all in bandages and plaster) from a cute touch on by Bloxham. I'm delighted because this out of form, out of sorts, somewhat patched up side have looked better today and I wanted them to get the reward, to get some confidence and to carry on playing like this. CJ looks good in a wide attacking role. I don't care if we're supposed to damn players by previous performances (I hear someone in the toilets saying 'the keeper is the problem' as if they've not noticed anything else since the first few games) but his movement in a position where he doesn't have to think about defending much is so much better. We bought him to play 433 and we've almost never played it since. The midfield actually has some presence in it as we've got enough players there. We're not overrun. We show a bit of patience. You'll not believe this, but sometimes our players move around a bit and make some space for each other sometimes  - I know! Incredible! It's like watching Brazil. (Ok, it's like watching Brazil who've got their boots on the wrong feet and blindfolds on, but it's at least something starting to resemble a 21st century football team playing to a plan and trying to make it work) 

It looks like the first few bricks of some foundations to me. It's not a row of bricks, it's just one or two - It's not something to build your hopes of champions league glory upon yet, but it's something that a few more bricks could be laid next to rather than just what the rest of the season has been - a big shitty, muddy field full of stagnant water. We've not even dug a trench to put the bricks in to date, let alone laid anything down. Dobs and Blinks have done a bit of spadework. Well done. More and better please, but carry on... 

Why is Banks coming on? I'm scanning the players. Maybe Bloxham - assist aside, he's not really impacted the game... CJ? surely not, he's played pretty well... I can't work it out, but then Tony Parr explains that Albie Morgan is back in the changing room and my heart sinks. This can only be an injury. My whatsapp group speculates and someone points out that Morgan pulled up and stopped running shortly before the end of the half (possibly round the time his awful pass presented them with their best chance) 

We're fucking cursed. We're back to 442 because throwing in Upton is probably too much too soon at this point.

Maybe it will be ok? 

It's not ok. The shallow trench of the first half fills up with water almost straight away. The bricks are submerged by a tide of Wycombe. The mortar and cement dissolves.

I don't want to write about it.

I've written about it before. Read any blog this season. We're overrun, they seem able to, at will, run at us and cut us open. 2 men in midfield isn't enough. The wingers we have are attacking players but they're just spinning hopelessly and air kicking pathetically, lunging fearfully as they're turned into shit defenders. The full backs are exposed. Neither of them have a lot of football this season either. 

Dobbie tries to pump out the water. He takes off Tom 'big dose of night nurse before a match' Bloxham and puts Hansson on wide so Banks can come inside and add an extra body to midfield. This might work - Banks is good, he's got two feet, he can take a pass and we need desperately to get back to parity of numbers. Hansson might be able to break. 

I'd love to pretend it worked - but it doesn't - Banks doesn't look fit at all. He's out of rhythm, the acceleration isn't there. His touch is heavy. Wycombe continue to stream forward, the ref continues to indulge their physical play and to penalise anything we do and our players start to tire. Ashworth has been really good today, his performance making a mockery of Bruce's refusal to consider him an option - but he's a victim of not having played 90 mins (aside from one tinpot cup game a month ago) all year and of having Emil 'blood and thunder' Hansson looking like some fella from a city who has no idea what he's doing in the countryside trying to nervously and ineffectually herd geese ahead of him.  The geese stream past him honking and nipping at him. Hansson looks worried and flaps an arm or a leg hopefully. 

Wycombe force BPF into some very good saves (I wonder if the man in bogs is muttering 'routine' as he he springs from nowhere, arches his back and claws the ball away from the top corner, or chucks an arm out point blank with almost eerie levels of anticipation and deflects it away) Lee Evans (another who I think is good (in terms of effort at least) today, tempting as it is to damn him on past performances) makes an incredible block on the line. 

It's not just that it's all Wycombe - we just don't exist. We're so unfit it's like having about 7 players against 11. 

Dobbie turns to Fraser Horsfall. This is the correct call. There is nothing on the bench that would give us more control. There's two kids and Josh 'just out of bed' Bowler so we might as well try and park the bus at this point. To be fair, I'm not sure whether we have a bus to park, but I'd settle for a largish people carrier and Horsfall is a unit. Ashworth bursts forward and literally runs out of pace... He's shot. Horsfall comes on, CJ goes to left back (the right move as their right winger is fast) and we continue. 

For a few minutes, we look better for it. It's not that we gain a huge amount higher up the pitch, but we're asking Wycombe to work harder to get through us and there's less space for them to exploit as we're able to pick up players more effectively in this set up. Maybe we'll get away with this? 

We don't. There's a horrifying injury to Michael Ihiekwe because, well, of course there is. It's trite and insensitive to try and make light of it for the sake of a shit motif in a shitfanblog, but the fucking PNE fan in charge of our luck is a cunt and is cackling to himself as types in the command. Ihiekwe started the season as our worst player but for the last 5 or 6 games has been our least worst and he's played really well today. He strides across and makes another commanding intervention, but their number 7 does that sneaky, downright dangerous, proper shithouse (as in nasty bastard) leaning forward instead of jumping move and he cartwheels over the top of him and lands awfully, grimly, heavily, worryingly on his head and neck and there's 6 or 7 minutes of medics and physios and neck braces and serious looking stretcher action. It's not nice. 

Theo Upton is on. We change shape for what I think is the 4th time. It's a 4231 I think this time. 

I actually feel sick. I realise I've been clenching my teeth and shoulder and calves since half time. Upton coming on just heightens it all because I want it to work. I want us to bring on a kid, a Blackpool fan at that and see this game out and us to cheer them off at full time and him to feel the moment and there be something to smile about. I wanted us to win before, obviously, but now, I want it all the more... 

There's a magnificent moment where the lad makes a double tackle. There's real aggression in what he does. Lee Evans celebrates the moment with him and Upton doesn't really respond much, he's focussed, he's chasing, he's sprinting - imagine being this lad. Just imagine it...

Imagine your dream coming true... 

Imagine making that tackle, the roar of the crowd around you, being in the centre of the noise you'd been making all your life, the sound that gives you something to belong to, the sound that is your town, your home, your family, imagine knowing you'd prompted it... the seconds ticking down, not able to glance at the clock as you would do as a fan, but focussing on the ball... sheer magic... 

Imagine then, turning as play goes back towards our goal, imagine running helplessly in the direction of the ball, watching as Wycombe waltz past teammates, despairing as the ball is poked into the box, wincing in horror as the player receiving it seems to have all the time in the world, hoping briefly for a BPF miracle but then stopping as the ball hits the back of the net. Imagine the sinking feeling, the impulsive fan reaction to lash out or scream to the heavens. Imagine being on that pitch though, exposed and defenceless as the cold, dissatisfied crowd turn their backs and begin to file out, the angry cries, the grumbling, the disappointment.... Imagine the muted boos at the whistle as you blow out your cheeks and think 'People say football is cruel but nothing prepares you for this...' 

I can't speak. Fuck knows how Theo Upton feels. 

--- 

I can't sum this up as some kind of scoring metric. 'He was good' and 'he was not' and all of that. 

The game has broken me. We're threadbare, we're unfit and we're actually under a hex. Every time we seemed to find a bit of stability, something undermines it. This isn't about 'who should be manager' - but I want Dobbie to do well, regardless of who we appoint, him, Evatt, Bloomfield, Uncle fucking Tom Cobley, Gary Madine ringing up and picking the team from a North East social club after 10 pints of Stella before the strippers come on or the ghosts of Jock Stein and Bill Shankly controlling us through a fucking ouija board  - I like the man, he shows some football intelligence and coaching ability - and he's dealt with 4 injuries that have forced him to change shape in 180 minutes of league football. He's dealing with fatigue in positions we have no back up for. I don't blame him for much, if anything yesterday - every unforced change he made to our shape (starting 433, going to 5 at the back) was undermined by injury - blaming him for enforced changes not working is like blaming a poker player for being dealt a shit hand. Take out Honeyman, Morgan, Imray, Ennis, Coulson, Ihiekwe, Taylor and whoever else I've forgotten and add the fact that what's left has multiple players who are nowhere near 100% 90 minutes fit and the guy is fighting a lost cause. At least I felt as if he fought it, tried things, responded and kept responding - but he's like a man at a knife fight with a broken set of plastic  kids party cutlery. 

In the first half, we weren't outstanding, but we did look a fair degree more coached, we did play a bit of football, we did look at least like a mediocre league 1 side managing to successfully get the better of another one in a typical low quality league 1 game, which, in comparison to the abject mess that went before was an improvement. Right now 'average' isn't to be sniffed at and having achieved something vaguely acceptable (polite applause at half time!) it's soul destroying to watch us unable to replicate it because we physically don't have the players to carry on playing the same way. They didn't not try. Anything but - instead, they broke down or ended up running in treacle. 

I'd honestly give my hind teeth for Ryan Finnigan right now... Not in any world did I imagine saying this 2 months ago. 

I get in the car. I've actually got cramp in my leg from the tension of the second half. I've got to go and be social now with normal people who haven't lived through this. I just want to drink myself into oblivion. I can't. I'm driving. I have to stop in the car park for 5 minutes and give myself a talking to. It's only football MCLF. You enjoy it. It's a distraction.. It's proper lunatic stuff to let yourself actually ruin your evening because of football. I go in... My mate says 'what's up? you look haunted!' - That sums it up. I AM fucking haunted by this fucking club and this affliction of caring about it. It's a ghost, a malevolent poltergeist and I can't shake it off. 

Fucks sake Pool. Fucks sake me. I spent the summer writing jaunty blogs telling Sadler to spend money on Bruce because what could go wrong? Fuck stupid blogger dickheads masquerading as reasoned voices but just spouting abject shit that proves to be way off the mark, fuck football in general, fuck fucking calf injuries, hamstrings, referees, fuck Steve Agnew, Fuck Stephen Clemence, fuck luck, fuck judgement, fuck not planning, fuck not preparing, fuck pre-season, fuck the season, fuck the lot of it. Burn it all down. I can't keep caring so much about this. 

Get an exorcist or something. Find the plug to the computer that runs this hellish simulation and pull it. 

There's always next week...

Onward

You can follow MCLF on facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email If you appreciate the blog and judge it worth 1p or more, then a donation to one of the causes below which help kids and families in Blackpool would be grand.

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Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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Nadir: the Mighty vs Wimbledon

This was fucking awful... It's so bad that before they've even scored, I'm thinking of a list of things I could have done with my time instead of watching the execrable performance by some sort of poorly drilled half hungover bunch of  timid imposters masquerading as a Blackpool FC team. 

My car needs new tires for example. I could have gone and got those and then, ran over my own foot several times*. I need to do some DIY about the house. I could have gone and bought a nail gun and fired it into my own knees. I need to cook food for the week and I could have done that then placed my fucking head in the oven**

*I don't know how I'd run over my own foot in my own car
**It's an electric oven so don't worry. 

I'm not normally given to hyperbolic statements of negativity - but the actions above would probably have been more pleasurable than the afternoons 'entertainment' at Bloomfield Road.  To try and describe the game seems ridiculous because, there's essentially nothing to describe. That said, a match blog without the match is equally ridiculous, so I'm going to have to try and wade through it. I'd rather wade through dog shit studded with broken glass in my bare feet to be honest, but a blogger without a blog ain't a blogger so let's give it a go. 

---

We started as a 433, an idea I might have quite liked had it not involved Ollie Casey playing (and looking painfully uncomfortable) at right back. Barely anything happened for about 20 minutes. I'm really not exaggerating. Nothing happened of any interest or note. 

What did happen was we played some painfully hopeful balls into the channels and some hopeless long balls up to the front 3 who were Taylor (a technical footballer and definitely not a target man) CJ (pretty shit in the air) and Josh Bowler (who has headed the ball about 5 times in his entire career and that's not really exaggerating very much). Not surprisingly, this wasn't very fruitful. 

Hayden Coulson sat down and Zac Ashworth came on. At least that was something that happened - even if it wasn't the sort of thing you pay to watch, it made a change from us giving the ball back to Wimbledon for a few minutes and watching the players have a drink was about as interesting as watching them play football. 

We then switched to 532 for a while, with Ollie Casey now not so uncomfortable but with us now having Josh Bowler up front, somewhere I've literally never imagined he could play. Nothing happened for ages apart from Bowler trying to slip Taylor through after a nice bit of control and a spin away from his man. It didn't work, but it was the nearest thing you could say resembled a moment of quality. 

I've got to be honest, by the point that Wimbledon scored I was that bored out of my mind that I couldn't get that worked up about whether the penalty was inside or outside the box. Whatever it was, we got cut open and Jordan Brown made a wild challenge because their lad got wrong side of our defence and needed stopping, if not in such a clumsy way... The penalty was dispatched past a static goalkeeper and the clouds felt a little heavier. 

We mustered a feeble Morgan shot after what could be generously described as a nice passing move on the break (the only one of the game I can remember) and a scuffed Jordan Brown shot that went well wide. I shouted "fucking come on Pool, you're fucking better than this" at them, but it didn't seem to have the impact I'd hoped. 

--- 

The football was terrible. The atmosphere non-existent. Wimbledon are nothing special but their fans are noisy and their team committed. I can't believe this is a side with Josh Bowler, Albie Morgan, Dale Taylor, Jordan Brown, Fraser Horsfall and so on. We look languid and totally lacking in imagination. It's been so bad that it can only get better. 

--- 

Now we're playing 442. We've taken off Fraser Horsfall who, for reasons I can't really even begin to understand, seems to be Steve Bruce's version of Neil Critchley's Jordan Thorniley. For want of a right back, we've put Jordan Brown (the best of our midfield in the last few games) at right back, even though, as I've already said, we've literally got an actual right back on the bench. Ash Fletcher is on. It's 442 again. What a surprise. 

Nothing happens for a while. The Kop tries some half hearted 'come on you Pool' and it just sounds sad. This place can be magical and it wasn't so long ago that we sung them home against Huddersfield, but it's just flat, really, really, really lifeless. It's not turned properly either - yes, we're not exactly singing this team to greater heights, but I've seen far more visceral reactions to managers' bad runs and teams playing badly than this. 

At some point Josh Bowler has a shot that is reasonably well, but nonetheless quite comfortably saved by the keeper. We take some awful free kicks. We keep hoping that Taylor will morph into someone who is really grreat at chasing hopeful long balls. We try a few long throws. Nothing remotely approaching passing and movement breaks out. 

Tom Bloxham is warming up and they buy a free kick. I think 'that's exactly what they want' and then, as they launch the ball into the box and end up poking it home as we fail to deal with it, I think 'that's it then' and about 2000 people seem to think the same and file out of the ground as those who remain chant "sacked in the morning" - but even that singing seems to lack the anger it can have. Tom Bloxham comes on and nothing changes.

We continue to be fucking awful and the only thing I can think of that was of any sort of entertainment value was the black comedy of us going from a free kick 25 yards out at their end, to nearly conceding a goal at ours in about 4 seconds, thanks to some piss poor sideways football that gifted them possession with the entire pitch to run into. Well done everyone. 

--- 

I don't think I've effectively put into words how bad we were. In all the time I've been doing this blog, that was as poor a performance as I can remember. Nothing Appleton served up was this bad apart from maybe Rotherham away. Blackburn away under McCarthy stuck in my mind as a game I particularly disliked and Crtichley's last home game was horrific - but I think this was worse than all of them. The first two were away in the Championship and the quality of the opposition was thus much better and the latter, we had the misfortune to face an on song Louie Barry in a really good team. Today, we just played a side (at home) who stuck to a fairly basic plan, who didn't have any players who really shone or looked impossible to contain and didn't do a whole lot themselves and yet, simply by doing some basic things, won comfortably and really didn't ever look like conceding. 

What made it particularly unpalatable was the lack of enjoyment on the pitch. I've rarely seen a side look so out of sorts. The body language was negative. The players looked so fed up with it all. There was no anger, no passion, no energy to any of it. It looked like we just wanted it to be over so the ground could collectively swallow us up. This is not what anyone wants to watch. Football is a game, it's a game we love or loved to play because it's fun and this was no fun at all, for anyone. 

It's pointless running through the individual performances, because collectively, we were dreadful. We were tentative and hesitant with the ball, we lacked movement all game and we were second to everything. I don't think it's possible for any one player to be blamed much more than the next and very difficult for any one player to thrive in the midst of such a performance. In fact, it was way beyond the simple 'he was shit' level - the whole thing was a write off - had it been down to a few mistakes or a particular player's performance, then that would be frustrating, but at least explicable - but today, it all just seemed totally and utterly wrong and sadly, I can't say it's felt 'right' very often this season at all. 

And then... just as I sat down to write this, he was gone. 

I can't say anything other than it is the right decision. Today was fucking horrific - but it's in line with the rest of the season. Pretty much every metric shows we're shit and can't play 442 direct football and for all the words about 'playing attacking football and being unlucky' we haven't been unlucky and we haven't played attacking football and every time we divert from 442 direct football, we just revert to it after 45 minutes anyway, so it doesn't seem as if we're ever going to stop doing what we clearly can't do and I'm not sure how we get out of this tailspin without trying something else properly. 

Steve Bruce is a good man I think. I don't know him, but in his interviews in general and in his manner and from the little I know about his relationships with players, he comes across as a decent human being - but he's the wrong man for this squad and the job of work to be done at this time, because he, and/or the coaching staff he's put his faith in, palpably failed in instilling the basics into this squad. We don't compete, we don't create, we don't look fit. In his last interview, he looks haggard. He clearly has no answers to give. 

Changing managers every ten minutes isn't a recipe for success - but absolutely nothing at all was pointing to triumph or even mere improvement and the performance today was just a slightly more extreme version of what's been happening all year - very little created at all, no sense of cohesion and reliant on breaks (which as Wimbledon had the sense to sit in, weren't on) or a bit of magic from an individual (which never came because it won't happen every week anyway)  - don't create, you invite pressure, invite pressure and you concede goals. 

I have no idea who the right man for the job is. I'm pretty sure it's not most of the people who get named because they're either past their best (most managers do their best work early in their careers), not realistically coming to us or more of the same.

I want to see us take our time and step back from the immediate demands of 'a name' to appease the crowd and to think about what we want and who we want to be. As a football club, I have no idea what our footballing 'identity' is  - whilst 'identity' is a shit word, ultimately, some sort of continuity would be helpful - we seem to go from a to be to c and back again with each appointment. This is costing us, quite literally, as one set of players is unsuitable for the next manager and we rinse and repeat, rebuilding and re-imagining ourselves each time. As it stands, we've got a blank slate because we've just played nearly 25% of a season with no discernable identity and a set of players who absolutely do not fit with what we've been doing and it is thus, the perfect time to step away and decide what we want that style to be because it can't be '90s football based on last ditch central defence and breakways' (and that's for sure) 

I want to see a manager who works hard, who values technical ability, who is willing to take risks, and shows some tactical flexibility and an attacking mindset. I want to see us scour every corner of the globe and listen to every applicant with anything like a semi-serious case to be listened to.

Instead of someone giving it 'one last shot' or 'another roll of the dice' - we need someone who is deeply committed to what should be the chance of a lifetime, someone who desperately needs this break to prove themselves to the world and to themselves. That person needs to have a really clear idea (in fact, several clear ideas) about how they want us to play in different situations and the passion and energy to get them across to the players effectively. 

There's literally thousands and thousands of coaches, assistant managers and managers out there across the globe, and the chance of managing an English football league club is an incredible one. To simply use the contacts book to come up with a name of a mate or a former manager would be appalling when, whether in this country, or in Ireland, Scotland, in Scandinavia, in South America, in the Far East, in Eastern Europe and so on and so on there are so many potential candidates.

Somewhere in amongst them must be someone with the verve, the desire, the footballing intelligence and the force of personality to grab this fucking incredible club by the scruff of its tangerine neck and shake us out of our torpor. If we can't trust ourselves do that and just take a punt on a name, then we've got to look very carefully at the makeup of the leadership within the club because we've got this wrong too many times by grasping at names - we need to go back to the beginning, decide what we want to be and find the best fit, whoever that is - and we have to have the footballing intelligence to do that. It feels like we need to do more than just 'get someone in to win some games' - we need to work out who the fuck we actually are first, because right now, we're nothing, we're noone, we're nowhere and that has to, in part, come from the last 3 or 4 years of jumping from one thing to another with no continuity of style or ethos. 

This has to be the low point for the season. We have to start on Monday with some serious effort at building relationships within the squad, building relationships on the pitch, building some patterns of play, some fitness, some aggression and some confidence in ourselves. In Stephen Dobbie, we have a man I thought was right for the job 2 and bit years ago - I have no idea if he's right for this moment because the world has spun many times since then - but, in terms of coaching and a response to that coaching on the pitch - it can't be much worse than it has been so far this year and if he takes the approach he took last time around and can get them playing with some energy, attacking mindset and some joy in their feet,  then that would be a very big start to the job ahead. 

In Dobs we trust because we must! 

Onward 

You can follow MCLF on facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email If you appreciate the blog and judge it worth 1p or more, then a donation to one of the causes below which help kids and families in Blackpool would be grand.

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Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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Capitulation - the Mighty vs Luton Town

I'm driving home (see how I've cunningly I've subverted your expectations, by starting, not just at the end but after the end. There are no rules here. We do what we feel, this is samba, free form football blogging) and Steve Bruce is saying 'we just need a slice-a-luck, the rub of the green, the ball to drop for us' on the car radio. 

He doesn't sound convincing. He doesn't sound convinced. He's been doing this a long time, he tells Ian "you've made your point, now get off" Chisnall, and then he tells him it again. Then again. What we learned, therefore, in several different ways, in case we missed it the first (and the second) time is that we're unlucky according to Steve Bruce and Steve Bruce has been doing this a long time.  Ian "Jeremy Paxman" Chisnall asks Steve "worselves" Bruce such thrusting questions as "when you're down the bottom, that's the luck you get eh Steve?" and Bruce is delighted to bite his question off to answer in the affirmative. 

Perhaps that's good communication. Like saying "442" 3 times before a game, in case the lads get confused and think it's another formation, which it isn't. It's 442. Do your best, keep it tight, don't get in front of the ball too often, don't let them get behind you. Say it all three times. I've been doing this a long time. I'm going for a cup of tea, any questions to Steve or Steve or whatever the other two are called...

Etc. 

I'm wondering to myself though - If we just need a ''slice-a-luck' (that's for sure)' then why are we paying probably the most expensive managerial setup in the club's entire history loads of money? IF football is just this simple - that sometimes the luck is with you, and sometimes it's not, then why bother with all the Steves and the sporting directors to appoint the Steves and the data team to give the data to the Steves for the Steves to ignore (cos fuck me, the data is shite when you look at it and says 'nah, lads, it's not luck, we're actually objectively shit) when actually, you could just get some lucky heather and give the job to Matty Blinkhorn once you've doused him in holy water and we'd be up the league in no time. 

Is it that simple? 

The game. We started really well. It's all relative to the season so far but for the first time in what feels like forever, we actually put a few passes together, pressed a bit and played a bit of football. CJ scored a CJ goal, in that he managed to hit it straight at the keeper but it went through him but no one cares, all goals are great goals but if you don't feel the love when CJ gets something right, then you have no soul and probably would advocate putting dogs and cats stuck in an animal sanctuary down as a 'waste of resources' and probably don't bother with meals, replacing them with those 'huel' drink things because they're 'more time efficient' - CJ is CJ and we're stuck with him and yes, he does CJ things, but sometimes (it doesn't happen all that often I grant you, but it does) he's ace and tonight, he had a good night so fucking enjoy the moment or just accept you are dead inside. Ole! 

Then the curse of Steve Bruce's weirdly misfiring, increasingly shoddy looking 90s football funhouse* struck again. In this respect, we are unlucky. Perhaps the Steves have run over some cats or walked under some ladders or broken some mirrors, but just as Imray collects a ball beautifully, he goes down screaming. It looks to me like an impact injury and worryingly like something snapped in his knee as he lands on his weight bearing leg after leaping for the ball. In such circumstances, it's tempting to bemoan our luck, like we're the ones suffering - but we'll get another right back (in fact, here's Andy Lyons, right now) and Danny Imray has only one career and as Andy Lyons knows, only too well, an injury at the wrong moment can set you back so many years, just as everything seems to be going so well. 

*at this stage, the funhouse is basically just an old garden shed with no windows or door, and a hole in the roof, with just the words "Andrey Canchelskis" (spelled wrong) scribbled in faint crayon on a dirty piece of paper pinned to the wall

We'd knocked it about nicely - Bowler had found a bit of space (and set up the goal), Morgan found runs with cute passes, we'd won some corners and CJ got to the byline and hung a beautiful cross up for Taylor to nod wide - but Imray's injury is a disruption to the rhythm. Luton look really tepid initially, but they warm a bit to their task and get some crosses in. Fortunately they seem to have not packed a striker for their trip away to the seaside, so the crosses are fairly moot. We do nearly concede a very surreal goal, where BPF runs out, tackles a player like an outfielder inside his own box and then everyone sort of just stops until, obligingly Luton hack the ball over the bar. It seemed as if we'd broken down inexplicably. 

We get to half time without great incident and without any of remaining decent players losing a limb or spontaneously combusting. 

--- 

The bar is very low, but I'd say that's the best we've played in terms of moving the ball and moving for each other. It's not like it was the Milan of Gullit, Van Basten etc or anything - but we've looked vaguely competent and Luton have obliged us, by leaving lots of space to break into which suits how we play. 

--- 

Ye gods, CJ has done it again. It's the same goal more or less, with Jordan Brown setting the move away with a great tackle and long pass, Taylor playing the Bowler role and the shot again striking the keeper (but, to be fair, being more confidently placed.) I'll admit freely, I didn't have 'CJ scoring a brace and Blackpool in charge of the game' on my bingo card for this point tonight, but this is the wonder of football. It surprises. It's always the same, but always different. 

At this point (somewhere around an hour) I'm feeling unexpectedly relatively pleased with things - it's not been vintage by anyone's definition, but Casey looks calm, Ihiekwe has suddenly found some form in the last few weeks and looks actually decent, Coulson hasn't been shredded too often by a paper shredder winger so far, Lyons is coping with being chucked in, Jordan Brown looks the best midfielder on the pitch, Bowler has shown some moments of languid quality, Taylor, I actually really like - I know that people expect striker who cost money to score goals and that sort of thing, but I like that he doesn't look that fussed about it - his general play is good, his touch, his weight of pass and so on suits bringing others into play. He seems to have a certain patience about him and there's just a quality to some things he does that feels mature for his age. If we were any good, I think he'd be very good. Maybe this is the loose foundation of a team? 

That's the thing. How you look at it is so coloured by the result at the time and as I'm thinking the above, it looks like we're heading for a comfortable win. We even manage to create a few more half chances, Bowler acrobatically hooks over after more good work from CJ, CJ has a couple of efforts for the hat trick. Luton look shit. A shit team in a shit kit the colour of some kind of watery lime flavoured ice pop. 

Then they suddenly don't look shit and all the optimistic appraisals are in the bin. 

They make some subs. They bring on a couple of tricky lads and a big lad. The big lad reminds me of someone, A kind of pigeon toed, barrel chested someone. He has a certain trot and a certainty in his own presence. He looks for contact with his defender, he's happy playing with his back to goal. Fuck me, I miss Gaz Madine and this lad is the dream we all dream. We all dream of a mobile Gaz Madine and they've got one. We don't have any kind of Gary Madine, mobile or otherwise or even just Kylian Kouassi, because why the fuck would a side with a keeper who can ping it on demand and who play a lot of direct balls need something as frivolous as a physical presence up front? That would be absolutely ridiculous! 

Luton are now a completely different prospect. Their crosses have purpose, our defence is swarming to try and prevent the ball reaching fake Norwegian Madine and that means shape isn't kept. There's space for players to run into. A corner. He heads just wide. 

We make some subs. None of them are what I want to do. Horsfall is a big lad. Why not fight fire with fire? We bring on first Tom Bloxham, who does one really good thing that might have led to CJ's hattrick, then runs about like he's been challenged in the dressing room to perform the game in the manner of someone humping bags of wet sand on his shoulders. In contrast to their new striker, he doesn't seek contact with his centre half and barring that one initial run, he doesn't pull players to him. rather seeks space. He needs to learn how to play this role or we need to use him differently because he's talented, but this is pointless cos he just can't play off long balls and centre forwards in teams like this need to be able to. 

Then they score. It's deflected (there's the luck that you can only see if you've been in the game as long as Steve Bruce) and a bit against the run of play if you look across the half, but it's not against the run of the most recent 5 minutes, which has been increasing Luton pressure. 

We make more subs. Now we'll see Horsfall. We don't. Instead we get Emil Hansson, who, being the weight of breath of wind and about the height of a milk bottle seems unlikely to nullify them as well as Lee Evans who is brilliant at pointing and having a huff at his own players, but again, when I last checked, not really likely to disrupt a side playing around a target man very much as he's not a) central defender or b) very good at running about when nippy lads are doing stuff. When I last checked, Horsfall was one of the best defenders in League 1 and we'd outbid Stockport (who are reasonably minted) for his contract - so it seems, to be quite frank, really fucking weird that he never, ever comes on, even when there's a threat that looks absolutely made for him to deal with. 

What follows is a bit like what happens if you put an ice sculpture on top of a fire. What previously looked to have some shape and form, just melts into a puddle. It's a shame filled pool of piss from a child who has been bullied to the point of terror. We look frightened, we can't get hold of the ball, we twat it away, we twat it into the stand, we try and run with it but get nowhere and Luton press. They press with quite a lot of patience and move the ball, trying to work the angle. They manage to fizz it across the face of goal a few times, they force BPF into a few punches and a good claim, they work the defenders, they force some blocks. It's not like they're hitting the woodwork or forcing double finger tip saves every 30 seconds - but it's relentless and we look rattled and lost. 

Then more of that bad luck that only 45 years of footballing experience allows you spot. Never mind the relentless pressure. They get a penalty. Just a random event that has nothing to do with allowing them to play in our half and on the edge of our box pretty much at will. I don't know if it's a penalty or not. The big lad flicks it on, a little lad and Casey come together with some force. It's hard to tell who upends who. I don't write this to be definitive - watch it, make your own mind up, I don't know. It's given and after some scuffling in the box between Albie and some lads twice his size, it's dispatched and the brief bit of optimism I felt half an hour before now feels foolish.  

They end the game on top.

For fucks' sake 'Pool. 

---

Before the game, I honestly struggled to find any optimism. We've been rank bad this year - yes, we've had a half here or there where we've matched the opposition - but we've never really looked dominant and we seem to treat matching other league 1 teams for a bit as a sign of some kind of earth shaking progress as if we're not a side who stated the ambition of promotion at the outset, but a plucky set of chancers in a league of giants.

We didn't 'dominate tonight, but there were points in the game where we played well enough and seemed to have the measure of Luton. I quite enjoyed the novelty of us scoring and having a few attacks! What we failed to do, in any way shape or form, was react to a side changing their shape and trying a different approach. We also wilted visibly in the face of a side who were clearly fit and able to play hard up to the final whistle - we just fell into two banks and sat deep and invited pressure, like a little dog, backing off nervously and barking, but never biting, looking sluggish and weak in comparison. 

I like some of these players as individuals and actually, my assessment of their potential isn't that different to what I felt on an hour - There's palpable ability in them - but collectively, we're just not playing well at all and even tonight, where we managed a few more shots than some previous games, we didn't really create an overwhelming amount and both goals were breakaways. There's nothing wrong with a breakaway goal - but we've not scored a single 'well worked' goal that has come as a result of collective team play, movement, a spell of pressure, this season. In fact, (a fun fact even,) CJ's brace tonight represents literally 50% of our goals from open play this year. 

Maybe Luton were lucky with the penalty (I genuinely don't know) but we were lucky on several occasions where balls across the box just didn't find a foot or a head, or when a Luton player leaned back in the first half and blazed it over.  Maybe being in football management for a long time teaches you that when that happens, it's not good luck but brilliant judgement by you and the coaching staff. Maybe having XG of less than 1 for game after game after game (and by far the lowest overall in the division) is bad luck, but when you score from a mishit shot the keeper should save, it's not 'good luck' but a master stroke. 

I thought we played ok for a bit tonight - but this is the problem - we need points. We need wins. Not 'signs' that we're 'getting there' - We need to move up the table, fast. The Steve Bruce Experiment is utterly pointless unless we're doing well and we're really not. It doesn't lay groundwork for anything, it's not some imaginative ideas that are being slowly picked up by the squad - it's a veteran manager playing simple football, based on withstanding pressure and hitting on the break. It's simple enough stuff and it's not working. It worked a bit tonight, but then it didn't work. It didn't work when everyone was fit any more than it has worked with injuries. It's worked for the odd moment here and there this year, but overall, it's so far from working convincingly it's actually painful to think about. 

Onward

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