This article was mostly written in March and orginally published in Now That's What I Call Progress - the premier Blackpool fanzine which you can support (cos you get 32 pages of stuff all about the Mighty for just £2) by clicking the link above.
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As I write this (at the beginning of lockdown), I, like many of you reading this, am facing the prospect of not seeing friends and family for a long time. I'm also trying not to think about how some people might not see friends and family again ever.
If you think that's a slightly morbid tone to strike, then I'm sorry, I have news for you. It's going to get even worse in the next paragraph. Are you ready? Brace yourself with a shot of whatever spirit you panic bought and buckle up. Ok?... Now, read on.
We might not see Armand Gnanduillet again in a tangerine shirt.
I told you it was bad.
There haven’t, if we are brutally honest, been too many week in, week out thrills since the homecoming. We’ve had a particularly stodgy set of players and there are times over the last year when wondering what Armand will do next has been somewhere alongside ‘wondering when they’ll fix the advertising board the Fleetwood fans smashed’ or ‘timing how long Larry can keep his his arms folded whilst doing nothing else’ as a highlight of the game.
Big Armand is, in my opinion, a football genius. A maverick with (a rare quality in the modern game), his own style of play. He’s one part height and power, one part languid and powder puff, occasionally explosive and occasionally hopeless. He’s capable of 8ft leaps and shoulder charges that leave the opposition crumpled but equally capable of watching the ball sail overhead with little more than a glance in its general direction and a look of gallic disinterest.
To some, that’s infuriating. They see a player wasting his potential, a player, who if he attacked everything with a snarling relish could be unplayable. To me, I see a player who has worked out his chief weapon is unpredictability.
To play against Armand must be a nightmare. He drifts, he wanders, he occasionally sprints like his life depends on it. He isn’t lazy, he covers a huge amount of ground, you just don’t always notice him doing it as for such a big fella, he moves around like he’s got carpet slippers on. He sometimes plays like a carthorse, but other times a nimble ballerina. He’s totally unorthodox and for a defender that is disorientating.
He’s also possessed of deceptively silken touch. Yes, sometimes the ball bounces off him like he’s made of concrete, but watch when his back is to goal and someone is running for him. The weight he puts on the ball is often perfect and the angles he sometimes conjures are mind altering. His vision is very good, his brain quick.
There’s the dribbles. Sometimes he looks like he should never attempt it again, staggering to a corner before tumbling to the ground like a felled tree. But every now and again, he just ghosts past two or three and on rares occasions will belt it in one of the corners.
My absolute favourite goals are headers. I love how crosses so often come to nothing, but from time to time, you can see what is going to happen a split second before it does. For each aerial challenge he ignores, there’s another moment where he charges onto a Feeney cross and plants it, unstoppably into the back of the net. I loved Dave Bamber, I loved John Murphy and I love Armand. I like a player who scores headers.
I love how he thrives on confidence, how he wears his heart on his sleeve and a goal puts a real strut in his step. I like how he is visibly lifted by the North Stand singing his name. I like his air of total calm before a game as if he really doesn’t care either way. I like the way he seems like a decent lad. When the young keeper had to come on and replace Alnwick, it was Armand who came over and put his arm around him and made him smile. When Joe Nuttall was having one of the worst games I’ve ever seen a pro have at Rotherham, it was Armand who put his arm around him and spoke in his ear.
He gets pushed and shoved and elbowed all the time, but he never lashes out. He’s just too cool. I like the way that when he gets knocked over in the box, or he misses a chance his incredulity is expressed with the flair of a mime artist, slow motion gestures and eye popping expressions of confusion or anguish. He plays like he knows it’s theatre and he enjoys playing his role.
Most of all, I like his spirit. I like that he’s not actually that good, except when he is. I like that he never, ever gives up. He just keeps on going, he doesn’t care if he’s just hit the corner flag, he doesn’t care if he’s mistimed his last jump or miscontrolled the last pass. He shows again. He trots back to his position and hits reset and is ready to go once more.
He is Armand and we could all take a leaf out of his book. He’s untroubled by failure, knowing that the next success is only just round the corner. Never fearful, never doubtful. Just soldiering on regardless. Life is a journey and there’s no point worrying about what went wrong or what might happen. Just keep going and doing your thing, whatever they say. Let’s all be a bit more Armand.
He’s everything that so many of our best modern players have been. Flawed, imperfect but full of character. Unloved elsewhere, but somehow touched by whatever magic comes with the tangerine shirt.
He’s my favourite Blackpool player, my favourite player full stop and for a long time, I never imagined having another favourite player. Some of you won’t agree. You probably think Messi is great or something. You simply don’t understand his genius.
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Now we're back in the present and I'm supposed to be homeworking, not writing about the big man. Go on, sack me...
I am genuinely sad he's gone. It seems all a bit 10 years old, panini sticker and full kit wanker (or them weird cards you get in FIFA that I don't understand for the yoot of of today I'd guess) to have a 'favourite player.'
A bit of personality goes a long way. The 2010 side was special, not simply because we were in the Premier League, but because it had character. Loads of it. Brett and Keith weren't the *best* players, but they made the whole thing that bit more magical, because they were ours, and particularly in Southern's case, the success seemed unlikely but there it was... to everyone's astonishment, Keith Southern was a Premier League player. Who knew GTF was that good? Who knew that Evo was capable of excelling in the top flight or that Brett's legs *hadn't gone after all* (or that his head could make up for it anyway...)
I love it when a player surprises, I love it when an average player becomes a special one. Of course Armand isn't Brett, Keith, Evo or GTF, not even close, but I enjoyed his success in a similar way. I liked seeing him exceed his percieved level and watching him enjoy it. We didn't have that many players you could cite as 'playing above themselves' and if you can't celebrate that, without wishing to sound like a knob, I'm not sure what you expect to get from watching a team who have been *mostly a bit average* for the vast majority of the seasons I've watched them. You have to take the rough with the smooth and Armand was the rough and the smooth in one.
I think he'd have done a job for us, even in a 'Critchball' style. For all the excitement about us playing an attacking high press like Liverpool or more accurately, like us (Aug 2009- Oct 2012) you need need players who fit the division to succeed. What works in the Premier League won't work just transposed with no adjustment to a division where you get no space and the chief skill of half the other teams is 'kicking you up in the air and getting men behind the ball' - Armand doesn't make coached runs or play to any particular style. He's a languid, deceptively skillful and unpredicatable chaos engine and that has its place in League One. Denying that is denying what League One is. It's a moot point though. He's gone.
We're a lot further along than when I wrote the main body... We're arguing over whether it's 40, 50 or 60k dead. We're trying to work out how and if and when we get a season next year and who will pay for it. We're facing wage caps in football and face masks on the street and insecurity all around. We're wondering whether the recession will be devastating or just terrible, whether the government should face a reckoning or not, whether the virus will burn out or return with a vengeance.
We know more and yet seem to know less everyday. Normal seems further away and yet within touching distance at the same time. There's a party atmosphere mixed with funeral solemnity, tinged with anxiety and sprinkled with a powder keg of social unrest.
It's a strange time to say the least.
Somehow, I imagine Armand facing it all with a sanguine expression and a nonchalant shrug.
Go well big man.
Cheers fella.
UTMP
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