The squad: Expert review - Part 1 GK's

'I've got 6 keepers FFS!' 'Well, I'm spending 200% of our turnover on player wages alone YOLO'  

I've been writing a lot about the end of football as we know it and it's starting to make me miserable...

...so what better thing to do than review a load of players ignoring the fact I haven't seen them in the flesh for ages and many of them might never play again in tangerine, could soon be out of work and heading down the labour exchange with the rest of us soon. Ignore that last bit. It'll only spoil your vibe. Turn that frown upside down. Stop slumping at the back. Think football. Us. 'The lads' 'Our boys' 

THE TANGERINE WIZARDS FOR FUCKS SAKE!!! 

COME ON YOU BLACKPOOL FANS, PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND WELCOME ON TO THE PITCH... THE ....SEASIDERS!!!!!!

It's fun again! It's like the Y2K bug never happened. 

I miss the innocent days when I would write things like 'Feeney, running in his odd upright way like a kid holding an ice cream at waist level' or 'Maxwell, prowling the edge of his box like a slightly unkempt and testy panther' and that was that. 

I liked that version of me. It was wide eyed and innocent, in love with a simple pleasure. Not all 'Oh, the end of the world is nigh' - that me is hard work. It takes at least 15 minutes of research to maintain the illusion that I know anything about anything. Can't be arsed today. Miss football, miss tangerine, even miss some of our frankly rank average journeymen really quite a lot. 

Even Ollie Turton.*

There will be no scores. It's not Strictly Come Dancing for fucks sake. You can make your own mind up. What do you want me to do? Chew your food for you? 

Goalkeepers: 

We seem to have about 50 goalies to review. That's too many, especially as 4 of them are probably good enough to be a keeper in our division, and that seems a bit excessive, especially now we can't have nice things or pay players more than 50p every fortnight.

Goalkeeping is my area of expertise (No1 in same school team as THE Neil Whitworth played for albeit 8 years later no less...) - Expect therefore, genuine insight in this section

Jak Alnwick: 

I don't have a lot to say. He's a good keeper. He's calm, steady, reliable. He's the sort of keeper that people who fancy themselves as a Sky Sports analyst cos they coached an under 9s team for a week will say 'yeah, but he got caught out on the second goal, should have been at the near post' and I'll think 'yeah, but I was our yr 7 school team keeper and you fuckers blame the keeper whatever he does' and I don't think he did much wrong at all. He could be a bit more assertive and maybe take crosses a bit more, but I think the defence know what he's up to and he has a lovely smart hair cut and rather purposeful manner. If he was a pie, he'd be an a decent steak and kidney one. I'm not going to compare all the keepers to pies. That would be ridiculous.  

Chris Maxwell: 

I love the lad. Keeper should be a bit odd and he is. Fidgety, always moving, you can tell he over thinks stuff and needs to keep busy to keep the thoughts at bay. Whereas Alnwick looks well coached and largely moves like a computer sprite programmed to do what goalies do, Maxwell looks like his own man and he's capable of some absolutely blinding, take your breath away, how did he do that, fucking hell I thought that was in stops. He's also clearly got a mistake in him but it's (closed) swings and roundabouts (or are they open? who knows anything any more) and in a few games, he has become one of my favourites. A really class keeper will make saves that feel almost as good as goals, where you've been through the whole mental anguish of visualising the ball in the net and it takes a moment to realise he actually saved it. Maxwell can do that. 

Mark Howard: 

This is harsh, cos Howard clearly was a decent keeper in the boycott years and seems a nice lad, but when he came back from injury, everything seemed to go through him. It was like he'd got the goalie version of the yips or just hadn't got his body working in tandem with his reflexes. I remember playing outfield in games on the rec where I'd turn round to whoever was in goals at the time and go 'you dived round that ffs' and sadly, I felt a bit like that with Howard. Probably came back too early and suffered. Keeping is ALL about confidence. I know, I'm a fucking expert. Yr7 school team m8. Should be on Sky. 

Chris Mafoumbi: 

He looked a bit crap in one of the pre-season or LDV games and Larry clearly never fancied him - he was great last year though. I thought he was the standout player in the run in (aside from Nya Kirby) and looked to me (an expert) like he was growing into being the first choice. Here's some totally unsubstantiated guesswork. At the Reading game (home) I was in the West, so closer the keeper's warm ups than normal. Mafoumbi literally looked so bad, it seemed he was taking the piss. Even Joe 'on paper, he's got everything' Nuttall scored every time past him. I watched him closely thinking 'this lad was decent last year' and to my mind he seemed to be literally not trying at all.  

The next day he went to Morecambe.

Maybe he fell out with Larry or Steve Banks. I hope it was Larry cos I don't like to think of Steve Banks being anything other than happy. Fuck you Eric Nixon. Fuck you you mop headed shitarse cunt. 

That just came out. Still hurts. Sorry. 

I'd be happy with him as second choice in a financially restricted world where we could only have Alnwick OR Maxwell. 

Jack Sims:
I can't really say much about the lad even in my genuinely expert capacity. He doesn't look physically ready to be a first team keeper yet, but he did a grand job when he came on. His kit looked a bit too big (I know all about that, cos we didn't have a goalie shirt and I had to wear a massive blue rugby top instead) and Armand had to go and give him a cuddle, but he was like a teenager (he is a teenager) shrugging off his mum and getting on with it on his own because 'god, Armand, there's people watching, let me go to the goal on my own!' 

One of the best bits of a really crap middle of the season was the way we got behind the lad and he pulled off some decent saves. Did himself proud. 

Miles Boney: 

He hasn't played, but seriously, how many keepers does one team need? Feel like I'm going to go for a piss after this and find a Blackpool keeper in the airing cupboard there's that many of them. 

That's it for now. My judgement is: We've got loads of keepers, Maxwell is the best cos I like messy things that have genius in them. Perfection is overrated. Listen to Sonic Youth. Real genius isn't neat and tidy. 

Alnwick's a good un though he's a bit more MOR. More of a Kaiser Chiefs or something. Mafoumbi could do a job. 

Critchley will probably get some kid no one has heard of instead of any of them. 

----

You'll never guess what's coming next time. 

...the attack!

No, it's obviously the defence ffs. I'm just writing words for the sake of it. Like all football related things are doing now. What's your problem? Yes, it could have been shorter and I could have put in a heat map and stats and said proper stuff but you can see that elsewhere and then pretend you know about things because you read a number once or copied an opinion. Cut and paste it and edit into something else if you like. Start Dave Burgess's Right Foot and we can have a twitter war over who is 'the third best Blackpool FC related blog' 

Bring it on. 

Love and hugs MCLF 

UTMP

*dunno what I've got against Ollie Turton. If you were going at him, I'd probably be all 'give him a break, he's alright at right back, just gets shoved about all over and looks worse than he is - the curse of the utility player - don't blame him cos Larry bummed him for no real reason than he was allergic to play two left footers in the same team' but what are we if not contradictory?

What else do we have but our endless thinking and indecision? Christ, I miss football and this echoey hipster German stuff isn't cutting it for me. Too much space for my own mind. Not enough crowd to drown myself in. Stop reading now. There's no more.