Season Review - A fantastic damp squib!

So, it seems, the season is about to end after all the speculation and we won't get to say goodbye. Given the spectacular levels of what young people call #awkward at last season's final game lap of honour, it's probably not a bad thing.

You can recreate the experience of an average final day by asking someone to blow a whistle choosing to either #clapfornathan or rush to your car. Why not ask some of your family/housemates/socially distanced neighbours to add depth to the experience by shouting 'absolute shite Blackpool' a few times in the background whilst you mutter to yourself 'not bothering next year...'

It's the strangest of ends to what was (despite long periods of mediocrity) a fantastic year. The 2018/19 partial season was an incredible celebration and then a strange experience - the team, the manager, everything just didn't seem quite 'ours' - This year was like a reset button, starting from the beginning made all the difference in how we felt the ups and the downs. There were plenty of downs, but what matters was, we felt them. That alone was fantastic. Experiencing (a lot of) frustration and (occasional) elation go hand in hand in football and this year, unlike the long years that preceded it, I felt both.

People found their places in the ground after homecoming scattered everyone to the four winds and the character of different stands asserted themselves. I spent most games in the largely sedate surrounding of the South stand, but contented myself with soaking up the fantastic spectacle of the North. It's hard to imagine that last year, this part of the ground was housing away fans.

On the pitch it was a damp squib. It seemed to be fizzing with explosive potential early on as Fonz, Super Gnands, Sullay and Feeney looked capable of cutting open sides at will whilst a well organised defence blunted the opposition. This proved to be an illusion as we lost our way somewhere around losing a lead to Coventry and despite a brief recovery when Larry remembered (then promptly forgot again) to play two players on the left, we never really looked convincing. We went from seeming like a nailed on playoff candidate, to reminiscing about 'good old Terry McPhillips' in a few months as we trudged to defeats against functional sides like Accrington and Shrewsbury. You know it's not going well, when seeing a former player play a single pass is the best thing to happen in ages.

It's not like Larry didn't try to fix it. He fiddled with formations and brought in (and was willing to play,) some tricky and skillful players. For whatever reason, it just didn't seem to work out. It felt as if he refused to see the obvious solution to what was palpably evident on the pitch and his stubborn refusal to play MacDonald (a player he signed) goes down as one of the most mystifying attitudes I've ever seen in Blackpool manager. I've always felt Larry had an eye for a player - it seemed that hadn't deserted him, but his willingness to unshackle the talent at his disposal just wasn't there and once Sullay stopped firing (and Larry's urgency attempting to get him back seemed to result in a recurring injury) the side just never looked like unlocking anything.

David Dunn then proved a surprisingly adept caretaker manager (who knew?!) and we caught a brief glimpse of Critchball (as I'll never be calling it again.) We got an all too brief experience of the skills of Kieron Dewsbury-Hall and Connor Ronan. The wins over Bolton and Ipswich, the Fleetwood first half and the second half fightback against Tranmere contained as much excitement and promise as about 15 games worth of latter era Larry part 2. I was really enjoying the prospect of seeing the last few games, without real pressure, as the new man tried to assert his philosophy and we got a picture of what we'd need to make it work next year.

I've nabbed this picture but I love it so much I don't care. 

There's so much uncertainty about Neil Critchley. Has he the presence to win the respect of senior players? Is he pragmatic enough to match his undoubted coaching prowess to the physical slog of league one? Will he be someone who steps out of the shadows to be force in his own right or (like Ray Harford, Paul Clement, Brian Kidd and so many more) be 'a great coach' who isn't quite a no1? No one can say. What we do know from his 2 games (and from David Dunn's games in charge) is we have a management team that will want to play the right way, on the front foot, with skill and movement. 

We, (even ignoring the Corona carnival) face next year with a massive set of unknowns. Our best players are loanees, our best striker is out of contract. Who comes in and out could be fascinating. We've got a lot of players in contract, but few that you'd expect to be the foundation of a top six side. There's some who might flourish under Critchley and some who you wonder 'who would want to take him off our hands?'  

Still, this year was never really about all that. It was about getting the new era underway and as much about what happened off the pitch as on it. As yet, we haven't seen the training ground or a new east stand and both (especially the latter) will be probably a while in the pipeline. It's probably a mark of being a Blackpool fan that the more you hear about the training ground plans, the more you wonder if they'll ever exist. In Simon we trust though and the buzz seems to suggest a location somewhere in town and the pace of progress reflecting the quality of the plans being drawn up. We'll get it right and it'll be brilliant. 

What we did see direct proof of was encouraging, as the club did its best to operate like a modern football club should. Some didn't have perfect experiences 100% of the time and questions were asked about one or two things but what is undeniable is, the custodianship is 100% more professional. The pitch alone speaks of the fact we have someone in charge who cares about the club. There's many other little details, too boring to list but just walking into Bloomfield and dealing with the staff shows how a lick of paint or a bit of effort can make all the difference. Stuff like the flags around the ground are tiny details, but those details have, for so long, been overlooked. 

In short, we aren't a shambles. Next time we progress, it might be because of the management, not despite it. We could have leapt from frying pan to fire and found an egotist maniac who used football as a way to gain attention, we could have struggled for a buyer, we couldn't have dreamt of having this security and quiet confidence in the future at the end of last season. The football may have been lumpen at times (ok, was lumpen at times) but I wouldn't have swapped this year for the world.

It wasn't all bad either. As alluded to above, we played some ok stuff at the outset and Larry didn't have the luck. He got things wrong, but we also seemed to have a run in which nothing quite bounced for us. For me, personally, the highlight was the game at Rochdale, where I spent the entire game in some kind of transcendental bliss state, sat just inside the edge of the shade, temperature perfect, whilst the sun rendered the pitch a brilliant green and bathed a Tangerine Army chanting its way through 90 minutes - the whole season seemed to lie before us like a yellow brick road to Wembley and despite the outcome of game itself being frustrating, it felt like the perfect day out.

Doing away games with my lad for the first time was amazing. His wonder at the Stadium of Light and his insistence on sitting at the back and thus becoming an honorary mucker, jumping around cos he hates Preston with a big grin on his face (despite not really ever having considered how he felt about Preston before that moment) will live long in my memory as will Matty Virtue's stunning goal and the freezing temperatures.

We saw some dismal home performances, but I loved the Friday night against Lincoln (my first game under the lights for years and the lads first night match ever), the last minute Nuttall winner against Bolton, the brilliant Maxwell save against Ipswich and the battering of the Cods to name but a few. To bring us up to date, I left the Tranmere game exhilarated. We'd lost, but we'd played 45 minutes of intense football and I hoped it was a lesson to Critchley in both League One reality and who in our squad was up to it. He seems an intelligent man (you don't work with Klopp for so long if you're an idiot) and I was sure he'd learn from it. 

What happened next, no one could have predicted. Just before the biggest home gate of the season (which I was really looking forward to) football stopped. I was going to go right up to the point of cancellation - I had my doubts but someone said to me  'you'll be fine, it's outside after all! - maybe don't take the lad...?'

How little we all knew eh? This advice (from someone whom I trust, both in terms of judgement and knowledge) seems like innocent words from a bygone era. Poignant words evoking a golden time before we all developed expertise in epidemiology and angry curtain twitching judgement of others.

The ticket still lies in my drawer, never to be used. Another friend had a ticket for a Nirvana gig that never happened after Kurt ended his days. Perhaps my pair of Row X South Stand tickets will be a similar cultural relic of a historic non-event one day. 

It's at this point where the new stewardship really made me proud. We've all got a story or five about Oystonomics - of penny pinching and extreme pragmatism - it would have been easy to imagine the club of old shuttering itself against the storm. Would the all new 'Back in Love' 'Backing Blackpool' regime prove any different. Simon Sadler, is, after all, a hedge fund expert, not Robin Hood. A sailor on the high and stormy seas of global capital, not a tofu love frog. 

The highlight of the season for me, isn't KDH and his rockets, Connor Ronan's best Wizard Wes impression, Super Gnands being superb, Feeney having the season of his life, James Husband's utter and constant commitment or anything else on the pitch.

Effort from a wholehearted player - what more can you ask for?

The highlight is seeing the work of the community trust and others, everyday during this strange time and knowing the club is playing its part. It's not simply me being sentimental, though seeing food collections, the club communicating to kids and society at large, players phoning the lonely and the vulnerable is moving. It's seeing something that is cast iron proof that our ownership recognises that the club is more than business. That it's willing to fund something that has a reward other than profit. 

When you see giant clubs cutting their staff and making sociopathic decisions, there's a real pleasure in knowing your team has just quietly got on with it. I'm not suggesting that the club is the second coming of Jesus - compared to the sacrifice of many, what the club has done is small beer, but it's done it.  The choices it made were socially responsible, not self serving. A football club without football is an interesting existential conundrum - what we've seen suggests, that at least in some small part, our new owners words about it being a community asset, where what happens on the pitch isn't the sole purpose of his stewardship aren't hollow ones.

Where we go next, is anyone's guess. It seems so long since 'we need a pacy striker' or 'is Spearing a vital cog or does he slow us down?' were the key topics of debate. Change the names and this is true of any club. Football itself is in existential crisis, funding, finance and furlough dominate discussion and supporters, like the rest of society have distractions they couldn't have conceived of just a few short months ago.

I am, on balance, glad we aren't limping to the end of the season on iFollow, though part of me would have relished the distraction. I'm missing things like trying to decide if Gary Madine (goal machine) is a big lump or brilliant exponent of the art of the target man, hampered by carrying an injury but ultimately, I think the decision to stop the game is the right one.

I'm not qualified to speculate what happens when we try to begin again or when we should do it - the thought of empty grounds till December makes me genuinely sad as does the prospect of losing some historic names from the pyramid. I'm simply not going to muse on what could, should or will happen, because to be honest - what do I know? What I am confident of, is this (relatively) short term crisis could and should be a chance to realign the whole of football with the interests of fans in the long term. We can only hope.

It does seem as if we are one of the luckier ones (at last) - It's never wise to be over confident, but all the evidence seems to say that we're a club that has some decent foundations. Whenever the game comes back, we're at the start of something. If football is facing a new era of financial prudence, then having one of the countries most highly regarded youth coaches at our helm and a calm, quiet owner can only be a good thing. Who knows what the next Blackpool starting line up will be, or when it will run out in front of a crowd at Bloomfield, but whoever and whenever it is, I'm looking forward to it.

Plus, don't forget - if the Premier League ends up gifting the title to Liverpool, we've got the 39/40 title to celebrate.

Keep washing yer hands and cracking on - we'll get through this.

As we say: 'The future is bright - the future is TANGERINE'

UTMP!