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First Rotherham and now Mansfield.
Some may say League 1 lacks glamour but if ever two ties disproved that theory it's Tuesday and today.
I'm still not quite over Tuesday. I've got a bit of a cloudy head and I think that maybe on Friday I was drinking to forget in an attempt to wipe the memory of the horrific nothingness that was Tuesday night. If ever a football game encapsulated the horror of the abyss and a sense of staring into a yawning, purposeless, meaningless vacuum then that was it.
Life is given meaning by the way you choose to see it though. Too often in the times of polarised anger, we find 'a truth' and then we backfill with evidence to suit the position, ignoring everything to the contrary. I fucking hated Tuesday and the prospect of a turgid trudge to a mid table finish hamstrung by a squad short of quality in key positions and overly dependent on loans because upstairs we've given up on the season and possibly the club itself could leave me not really salivating over matchday.
There is without doubt possible truth in that view. This is a club so obviously cuttings its cloth according to the circumstances surrounding it's owner that it might as well be called "Simon Sadler has got other things going on, maybe you'd like to buy us? FC" - that said, I'm bored by owners and off-field shit. I'm sick of it in the game as a whole.
I don't go to football to chat about spreadsheets and interest rates and legal systems in countries I've never been to. It's a sad fact of life that all of that does have an impact on the on pitch 'product' (vomits into small bag, wipes mouth, carries on typing shit) but come 3pm all of that is just fluff because the Mighty are in town and this is matchday.
If we focus solely on what we don't have or what we strongly suspect might be going on off the pitch then you lose the point of the thing - the event, the atmosphere, the sense of support for the fact there's a group of lads playing football and we want them to win. We've been there with bells on of course. This isn't something I need to explain to anyone. The atmosphere on Tuesday wasn't toxic , it wasn't anything like the rancour that stopped me wanting to go even before we boycotted - it was just flat. Flatter than flat tyre being ironed at a depth of 30,000 leagues under the sea.
That flatness is understandable. Everyone is frustrated that we've never looked remotely like a team heading back to where we came since we came down. Everyone can see we need some more decent players - but... here's the thing... here's where I try and inject some positive thinking to what has so far been pretty grim stuff - some of that frustration comes because of the good things that are happening on a footballing level. We are defensively excellent, we have got better options wide, we've broken the away hoodoo and are as good a prospect as anyone in the division away from chez Bloomfield, we've got a manager who has 99.9% of the fanbase behind him, we don't send Matty Virtue on for 8 minutes every game no matter what any more, we sometimes change formations during a match and we've even blooded a few kids here and there.
I guess what I'm doing is trying to write myself into the mood for the game - I have frustrations with the way the club is being run at the moment. I think most people share them to a greater or lesser degree - for all I know, Sadler himself is pissed off at his situation - who can say? - but all of that aside, I also see a group of players and a manager that have some character and resolve and whilst I'm not convinced we've got a 10 game winning run on the horizon, I think that manager and those players deserve some backing.
We, of all clubs, should know that in football, the owners come and go, the CEOs can write all of the strategies they like and fill them with as many buzzwords and corporate goals as they want, the accounts can be balanced and finessed to tell all kinds of stories. Yet, the point of it all is the game, the crowd, the atmosphere. This isn't, at this point, a vintage Pool side. It's not one you'll tell your grandkids about. However, it's what we've got right now and for the time being, shouting at Jimmy Husband or groaning at CJ isn't going to change our wider circumstances.
The atmosphere is down to us. Yes, it's also driven by the way we play - but at our best, we've urged teams on to achievements far beyond their assumed ceilings. We've changed games by simply keeping going. We've lifted players to be better than they've ever been anywhere else and anywhere since.
Football is a capricious game. One minute you're looking at a new era of Blackpool FC and the next, it seems like the 1990s again and everything feels stagnant and the ceiling seems lower than it did a minute ago. That's life as a club like us. It is what it is what it is.
The one constant we can rely on is each other. The crowd, the atmosphere, the noise.
Owners, business and finance have far too much impact on football as a whole. If we let all of that dictate how we feel all the time, then to be honest, half the country might as well just roll up the pitches and pack it in.
If we let our atmosphere die then we're letting the whole point of the thing die. It's our nose we're cutting off to spite someone else's face. It's not about winning the Premier League - it's about the 90 minutes today, now. This one. The snobby attitude to Everton celebrating their draw with Liverpool just shows how many people fundamentally misunderstand that most football fans make their own fun. Most football fans aren't being served up glorious free flowing top level football week in week out and celebrating multiple trophy lifts. Mostly, it's a bit shit with some noise and chanting and the odd great moment sprinkled in to make it worthwhile.
Yes, stuff has to change in the bigger picture. That's beyond doubt. That's not up to Apter or Carey or Husband or Fletcher or any of them though. All they can do is play football. Get behind them today. Choose to suspend disbelief for 90 minutes and injury time.
Enter dreamland.
Its doors are open.
Return to grim reality around 5pm.
We're going to smash them today.
Fact.
Onward
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