I've been away so I don't really have a sage preview full of wise pre-match words to write. (reader: 'no change there then...') We drew, we won, we lost. I didn't see any of the games. From what I've gleaned Lavery is mustard, Bowler isn't shite (I was undecided on this technical point having reached the measured conclusion that he *may or may not be any good*) and Critch is still up to his usual game of 'pick the team no one on social media picks.' Performances have apparently ranged from world beating to a bit shite.
It's only right to mention that Coventry are happily back playing in Coventry which is *a good thing* - Imagine if we'd had to play at Preston or Blackburn for a year cos of mad rent shit whilst Fylde played Rugby at Bloomfield? Summat about being sent *from* Coventry that probably every shit blogger ever has thought of. Some more random stuff. Mark Robins is the tenth longest serving manager in English football. Keith Houchen's diving header in the cup is possibly my favourite non-Blackpool goal ever probably because that match is the first football match I can actually remember.
I quite liked Coventry in the old days cos they seemed to hang about being not very glamorous but somehow not getting relegated until finally they did. I saw them get well beaten in 1988 when an Everton season ticket holder took me to Goodison for the first actual live game of my life. Youtube is a goldmine of old football stuff and I find the video but don't spot myself. Would you spot your 8 year old self? I'm not sure. I haven't seen a picture of me as a kid for a long time. I don't really know what I looked like. That's a weird thought. Let's move on. The video also reminds me that a) Kevin Sheedy wasn't always utter shite b) Steve Ogrizovic played for Coventry for about 300 years. In fact, I wouldn't be all that surprised if he was in goals for them tonight.
In the old days, Ogrizovic was one of the weirdest names in football. I do a quick google and the teams that day were a sea of mundanely British surnames with only the Dutch Welshman Van Den Hauwe comparing with Mansfield's own Steve Ogrizovic for novelty value though it always seemed quite funny to an 8 year old that David Speedie was quite nippy. It still does to be fair. We've already established that I dunno if I'd actually spot the 8 year old me in the street but I still *feel* essentially the same person inside. That said, we actually regenerate our all of our cells every 7 years* so by now I'm literally about 4.7 times a different person than I was than.
*I'm a bit sketchy on the science of this tbf. It might be complete shite**
** Actually, it's broadly accurate according to a page called 'how stuff works' which is the sort of trustworthy title that makes me think they know stuff about things and how they work.
I could happily sit in an empty room on a saline drip and watch old football videos on YouTube forever. How the world turns. How we move forward, forever. The past getting both grainier and sharper, fading and becoming ever more colourful at the same time. More distant but yet strangely growing in emotional strength the more it recedes. The present is always raw and a bit frightening. The past is safe even though it was just as raw and weird when it was the present.
Shit! I've digressed a bit. This isn't the thrusting kind of tactical insight I'd aimed for. I've not even been talking about the Mighty for the last 4 paragraphs. For fuck's sake MCLF. This is championship blogging now, not the easy going league 1 stuff where you can get away with a digression like that without being punished for it.
So. Pool: Get into em. Attack. Play the best players. As my dear ol' Grandad used to say 'Kick them up in the air....' Score more than them. Win.
That's better. If you're still reading, thanks. Your patience is appreciated. Think of this intro as the blog equivalent of standing in the queue for forty minutes any time you want to give Blackpool FC any money. It may or may not get better... Fair warning.
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The first half seemed mostly to consist of their players running past Richard Keogh. Their no 10 was particularly good, running at our defence and then passing to someone to run past Richard Keogh. Sometimes he ran past Richard Keogh himself. It struck me as a novel approach, having a skillful, technically gifted and attack minded player *in the middle of the pitch* as opposed to *on the edge of the pitch* and I promise myself not to mention any Wycombe Wanderers players in the blog tonight.
Chris Maxwell remains a really good player. That's important because Coventry are giving him quite a lot to think about. Jimmy Husband does ok as well and whilst I'm still convinced Connelly isn't a right back, he's up for it and doing his best. I don't think Garbutt should have had a haircut though because Coventry are also finding space behind him and when he gets the ball, he also seems to have turned into Ollie Turton. Where is the marauding wing back with the glamorous hairstyle?
Keogh mystifies me some more. He's really good at some things. He's very cute in finding little passes or clever defensive headers to a colleague. It would be fair to say, he doesn't look very good at running or tackling. He makes a really big deal of passing the ball 5 or 10 yards to the side. It's like he's being filmed for one of those 90s VHS 'Soccer Skills' vids where pros show their technique and you copy them. He's so precise about how he does it, arms out for balance, leg following through in the direction of the pass. It looks like Liam Brady spraying it 50 yards onto a sixpence, not a centre half knocking it square to another centre half. Then he goes completely mad, winning the ball and going on a wierd run to nowhere, dribbling past a few players with the look of an out of control frightened horse before losing the ball and sliding into a wild challenge that gets him booked. Call it rose tinted memory but I don't remember Ballard doing that very often... Or to be fair, Brian Reid either. Then, later in the half, there's a great defensive header from a Cov cross (it's weird isn't it, how people call them 'Cov' but don't call Everton 'Eve' or Exeter 'Ex') that brings me to my feet and it's mad Uncle Richard getting up from the turf, heroically sweeping his side parting and pointing at stuff only he can see, glad to have a break from the fast lads running past him for 20 seconds.
Essentially Coventry are better than us for most of the half. My lad says quite early
'you can tell we're in a better league' I reply 'why' and his analysis is pretty spot on - 'The other team are faster, better at passing and heading and everything, just better than the league one teams.' I can't really argue. Maybe he should do the blog. It would be shorter for one.
We do, however make chances. Lavery curls one just wide wide after Keshi plays a delightful ball from wide into his path, letting him take it in his stride and cut across the box. Jerry bundles into the box after knocking their full back over and showing a glimpse of his skills but drives at the keeper when it looked for all the world like he should have squared it. Bowler, who is the brightest spark of the night, charges a clearance down then belts through, but looks to have too much time to think about it and their keeper out psychs him and makes a good stop. He also provides Lavery with a couple of chances, the best of them from a gorgeous through ball, a mirror of Keshi's earlier pass that this time sees the mobile Lavery come across the box, run on to it, and shoot from the near post side and it being turned away for corner.
Then Cov score. I don't really see the goal clearly cos I'm walking down the steps convinced the half is over. The just seem to waltz through, play the ball wide, cross it in and score. Maxwell comes out of his goal furiously signalling handball and everyone is very cross, but nothing can change the fact it's 1-0 to them. I don't know. I watch it on the grainy replay in the concourse whilst not succeeding in spending any money (see also the club shop before the game) and I can't tell. The lad in front of me is insistent it's a handball, the fella behind me is definite it's hit him in the face.
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At halftime, the lad comes out with another pithy and succinct point. 'Dad, it seems like Blackpool haven't really planned for more people being here now we're in the Championship.' Again, I can't really argue.
Surely we'll see Marv and King Kenny in the second half. I've not mentioned the name of a central midfielder thus far and that's probably a good indication of the way the game has played out. Coventry have controlled it, but they're not *that good* that we can't hit them on the break. Ward has, I think, been ok but he's a technical metronome that needs an enforcer and James isn't that man. I don't think James is *bad* but he's simply not the presence the game needs. Keogh hasn't yet played his way into the pantheon of 'great tangerine centre halves' is the kindest way of putting it I think.
I say 'surely we'll see changes' but we all know we won't. Critch is twinkling impish football maestro who made our dreams comes true. He has been jumping up and down, pointing, clapping and generally looking quite manic (by Critch standards) and we love to see it but he doesn't do halftime subs. It's not his way. Unless it's Jordan Thorniley.
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The second half is frustration. They seem to handball it for real about every 5 minutes. They don't have as many chances but Maxwell makes one blinding low stop to his left that is simply fucking brilliant. I've never seen a keeper so good at reaching low shots than he is.
Coventry are buzzing about a Brazilian. They sing about it for what feels like hours. They twist and shout. To be honest, they're relentless in their support and I don't know why, but our wall of sound never seems to get going. Is it more people turning up expecting to be impressed? I dunno. We're usually louder than this. It's a weird one in that we never really have a sustained period. We do have decent moments, but they're all spaced out so maybe that's why the noise doesn't build as it often does.
It takes a while, but we make some more chances. Yates and Lavery combine and the new lad has a header saved. Keshi rattles an effort in that's saved low down. Garbutt continues to not be as good as he can be, but then he smacks a terrific effort that the keeper tips over having drifted infield and over to the right. Better. Bowler runs the length of the pitch. I can't remember what actually happens at the end but the run itself is a thing of beauty, Maxwell finding him deep in the full back berth and then him blazing past a couple of players with a trick, a little jink shuffle. He's good. He can do stuff without slowing down.
He seems a nice lad too. One of their lads goes down. We play on. The ball comes to Bowler. He lets it go out and points to the prone Sky Blue man and makes a gesture as if to say 'c'mon, I want no part of this devious plot.' The rest of the team look a bit sheepish. I decide he's a moral individual. I like the cut of his gib. He seems to have that knack of not being downhearted when it goes wrong and just doing his thing.
Time ticks by. We look stretched. Connolly gets booked for a very professional foul. Keogh has hit on a top plan to cope with the really fast players (basically, everyone looks really fast compared to Keogh so it's hard to tell if they are actually fast or not. They don't look as fast when running against Jimmy.) The plan is to run into them and fall over. It actually works once as well. We still look stretched. We put together one or two nice passing spells. The noise rises.
Time is still ticking as it tends to do. I get cross as Ward and Connolly faff about not crossing it, but it turns out they're actually creating a really good angle for Ward to cross and Lavery to score... actually, no, he's squeezed it just past the post. We sit down. In the words of the world's greatest football analyst "It's one of them Chizz"
Dougall is on by now. He's given us a bit more of a grip of midfield, but he's not looked his best either. so it's more of a finger hold than a vice like one. TJJ is also on, with Yates off. He has a little flash of skill from time to time, but he looks as if he's sort of caught between being a striker and playing deep and not quite doing either. I'm not sure the side is set up for that. CJ comes on and runs very fast, but Coventry come up with a cunning plan of putting a man on him that can also run very fast. It's that dastardly next level tactics stuff that'll do you in at this level.
People get up and start filing out. 6 minutes of injury time though. Where are they going? It's always baffled me that. We work it down the left. The ball is cut back. CJ is there. CJ is on it, CJ is putting it into the north stand. It's one of them Chizz. It's one of them.
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I don't want this blog to be a slagging off of one player. It's not right to do that. I really don't understand Richard Keogh though. He might work in a back three with mobile players next to him but I am baffled as to why we're playing him in a pair as he just looked out of his depth and the whole point of his signing was that he would be the player who understood the water we're swimming in as opposed to the one floundering and being rescued by teammates. At one point, I was trying to explain the concept of 'the high line' to my lad and to show him how all the defenders were in a line to catch players offside. Guess who wasn't... I'll stop. He's got a fun photo on twitter and he's not utter shite. There's flashes of real class when you watch him (no, really, there are!). I just don't get how his attributes fit this team and why you wouldn't be playing players like Marvin or Casey because a) they've got stuff to learn about football and b) they're faster than him. Ok, if Keogh was brick wall, grand, but he wasn't suited to that game against a skillful front three yet he played a full 90 mins. He's not going to be a sellable asset or a possible cornerstone of the defence in 1,2, or even 5 years time as both big Marv and not quite as big Oliver could be. It just runs so much against the grain of what we've done to date that I can't work it out.
Maybe I'm wrong and I'm always a bit slow when people go 'ah, the goal was actually the player at the other end's fault because he didn't track the run of their left back and that opened space up, so therefore, the lad who fell on arse and let the striker score was actually left exposed when he shouldn't have been' but it was weird to feel a lack of trust in the defence (basically, when anyone ran at Keogh) after months of feeling like it's actually something really special.
Listless Luke is a mystery. I think possibly the formation isn't helping him. He's nowhere near as good as Jimmy at being a *left back* but he's better at being an attacking wing back. We aren't playing him as one though. I'm not sure why we wouldn't do that, or instead, play Jimmy at full back.
Bowler is a player. I like him. Lavery missed chances, but he's mobile and relentless and he didn't miss by much. Him and Jerry might work, but we can't hoof it to them and we did sometimes. I've already said what I've said about the midfield and we miss Kevin Stewart so much it's as painful as the recurring knocks that he keeps getting must be. I remain to be convinced that Keshi is an infinitely better player than the one I'm definitely not mentioning in this blog, but I also feel he's suffering a similar fate. We were crying out for another body in the midfield that could thread it or drive forward. We've got two little skillful players up front and someone behind them like Keshi could unlock triangles, make late runs and create uncertainty.
It was a bit odd. It's like we set up the side for a front two with Madine in it. Keogh actually floated some quite nice balls forward that the Goal Machine would have loved, but the Goal Machine is having his roots done rather than playing football atm. The question is, do we need to find a formation that makes the best of what we've got (more or less, we obviously need a right back) or are we going to bring in players to make this work? If it's former, this isn't the answer in my opinion. It gives neither the defensive solidity to frustrate teams and hit them on the break, nor the creativity to overrun sides. If it's the latter, then we really, really need another Kev Stewart.
All this said, we made chances. We could easily have got a point (but then, we could easily have shipped 2 or 3.) We will get better and when you add Madine, Stewart, fully up to speed Dougall and a pairing of Marv and the Viking into the starting line up, there's a much, much stronger spine to work with.
It'll be reet. Get behind em. Bournemouth next. Piece of piss! 10-0 at least. Jerry to score 7 and Keogh to head a hat trick.
utmp
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