C'mon you POOOOOOOL!

This is what we are. We never make it easy, but we are fundamentally greater than anything and everything else in the entire universe and anything that can be conceived beyond that. That is the truth, the one truth, the only truth and it is beyond dispute. Any deviation from glory is merely a glitch in the matrix and will right itself because what is inevitable is tangerine and whilst fate can take time to manifest, it can never be cheated. 

I didn't expect to be at this place in my head after 3 games. We've signed some proper players, who on paper (and indeed, judged on their previous deeds on the pitch) you'd imagine would improve us. I wasn't stupid enough to think we'd win every game 10-0 but I thought we'd be seeing at least something to get excited about... 

The evidence of last week was that, far from looking like the all new, all conquering Seaside dream machine of our collective desire, we resembled a tribute act to Mick McCarthy's Blackpool - no cohesion, no sense of a plan, only the briefest hint of midfield play and very little to be positive about. Add to that, the kit that evokes a child's fever dream of Parma Violets and tigers in the sea and then doing whatever we didn't do for Dale Taylor ('Simon? Er .. I thought I'd sent it, but it's sitting in my drafts still....') and a follow up defeat in the League Cup and it's not been a great week.

It's only a few games.

I keep telling myself that.

Football is fickle. One minute it's all "In Bruce we trust!" and the next it's doom, gloom and misery.

Let's reflect a bit...

1: This set of players CANNOT be as bad as the first three games suggest.
2: Virtually everyone we've signed comes with a certain pedigree.
3: Almost everyone has significant playing time at a higher level or for teams that out performed us last year.
4: Football is probably the ultimate meritocracy. You simply don't get to play at a level for an extended period of time if you aren't good enough. You get dropped, sold, relegated. That's how it works.

It takes time to form a team. At this point. It feels almost like a legal obligation to list all the seasons we've started badly but done well in ultimately. Without some hope, it's just an exercise in masochism. Football doesn't work to the simple metric of 'last week is this week' - if it did, it would be a piece of piss to clean up at the bookies every week.

Exhibit A: Barnet 7-0 Blackpool 2000 - after that game, did anyone have us sweeping up the Cardiff pitch scoring glorious goal after goal to seal promotion on their cards? Not me)

If we extrapolate future outcomes from limited evidence, then we might come to the conclusion that Tony Cottee will be the greatest manager of all time

Exhibit B: Wimbledon 1-0 Blackpool 2020 - Whilst not a drubbing, (Blackpool 1- Ipswich 4 2020) would be though) - such was the ill discipline and general toothless shambles of this display that I thought Critchley was done and the squad had given up on him. Whether or not Calderwood and whatever the whys, hows and wherefores, the fact is we barely missed a beat for the rest of the season and we all know how it ended.

There's a temptation to call for sweeping change or to conclude that the signings are duds and we've completely fucked up, put it all in the bin, set the bin on fire and put the ashes into a rocket and fly it into a black hole, fold the club, start a phoenix club and go again because everyone is completely shite and it's an abomination to match the post office scandal and fucking this lot are worse than Hitler and Pol Pot on a bad and probably a firing squad is too good for them (etc) - but the team beaten at Barnet was largely the side that would go on to promotion. Players like Wellens, Simpson, Ormerod, Murphy, Hills and Coid all got hit for 7 and then formed the heart of my favourite ever Blackpool side and are all among the players who've given me most joy as a 'Pool fan - it's really easy to forget just how bad they were before they were any good. 8 of the players thrashed by the side that went out of the league that season were in the play off final starting line up.

Simmo. A rhapsody in Tangerine. 

This isn't to say we just 'leave it be and wait' - there are definitely areas to address and weaknesses in the squad. We miss James Husband (no, we do! we really, really, actually, genuinely do) and having only Andy Lyons to play right back is almost cruel - he's trying to regain his touch and positioning and so on after 18 months of no football in a side themselves desperately trying to work out what they're doing and with a goalkeeper who hasn't yet formed any understanding with the defence and is palpably out of form. In other words - there are gaps and those gaps are exacerbating the issues. 

I'm also not sure that we can play two in midfield as a matter of course. Last season we hit on the idea of the left winger as a kind of inside/outside player who could add a body to the middle and we seem to have explored recreating this on the right with Honeyman but with the consequence of our best player in a more peripheral role. Both Honeyman and Carey have exceptional stamina and can play that 'double' role but without Morgan, we don't have the dynamo that sets the pace in the middle and compensates for the fact there's only two there sometimes. Evans is not in form (let's be nice) and Brown isn't a player to set the tone but to tidy up and disrupt. As a two, that isn't going to match an in form opposition 3. Hanson, Hamilton and Ebiowei aren't likely to play that hybrid wide role either. Therefore... there's surely merit in greater flexibility in the engine room of the team in order to have a more effective midfield and we surely train for that and coach for that and players would have prior experience of that too - because none of our midfielders are 'raw' and have played different systems. 

Let me be clear - I really like watching 442. It's a lot of fun. There is a reason though, why it's rarely utilised and that's because generally, in midfield, 3 beats 2 and if you can win the midfield, by and large, you'll do ok. 

An individual (unless genuinely exceptional - and by definition, most players everywhere aren't 'exceptions') is only as good as the team they're in and if you lose a midfield battle then the defence will be pressured and the attack will struggle for chances. A player like Coulson or Lyons whose instincts are to get forward will never be at their best when pinned back - Husband or, say, Ollie Turton would revel in that - but blaming the attacking full backs for not being better defensively alone is missing the point - we fundamentally haven't taken charge of games and that is a bigger issue to me than most of the individual errors. We've not so far missed a stack of chances or regularly shown great build up

There are mitigations - we've barely seen some of the players and not seen Morgan, Husband or Imray at all. We all (I assume!) want to see instinctive, imaginative football above systems football and instinct in a team is forged by playing time. Ebiowei, Hansson, Bloxham, Taylor, Ennis, aided and abetted by Morgan's energy and imagination and Fletcher's random chaos factor sounds quite impressive as a set of attacking options but only Niall, Albie, Ash and Tom actually know each other's names.

There are also curious things at play - I don't really know why the evident tenacity and physicality of Zac Ashworth isn't utilised. I don't know that he's *actually* any good, the sample size is too small - but he's clearly willing to get stuck in and run hard and right now that's quite a handy thing. I also don't really know why Kouassi sits on the bench but never comes on the pitch even when we evidently need some physical presence in the dying minutes. We might not have plans long term for these players (and I'm not trying to argue they are 'the answer' - cos it seems very unlikely Kylian is at least) but in lieu of signing a.n.other player (and we probably need some of those still), why don't we use them when their attributes would be the best fit (from what we possess) for the situation we're in at this particular moment? Shove a defender up front, they sometimes score - so shoving an actual striker built like vintage wardrobe upfront and we might score when we're a goal down with seconds ticking away and we've not really made a lot up to that point.

Maybe Bruce is distracted by the plot of a new novel where Stu Bryce (football manager) strangles the person who spelled the name of the new signing wrong on the registration papers of 'Dave Tyler' (striker) or wrote 'Blackburn' instead of 'Blackpool' in the box for the team name? 

I enjoyed Steve Bruce last season. I admired his pragmatism and what seemed like an uncomplicated and honest approach. I want this to work. I want us to be what we looked like at points last season. A side who can keep their shape and grind but who can play some expressive and genuinely joyful football. I don't want us to be mired in a fixed and rigid ethos where we do things 'because that's what we do' - I don't want players to be cast out or stubbornly persisted with no matter what. After the coach speak and systems era that had gone before, Bruce felt like a clean slate for everyone and the players largely responded with effort and energy and that fed into the fanbase. It wasn't outstanding or sensational - but we generally played with a bit of pride and that went a long way to feeling some connection with the team. It's a bit of a mystery as to where that sense of 'something' has gone and the answer can't surely be simply 'to Charlton' because, yes, we've lost some but we've also gained quite a bit.

Come to think of it though, Keogh left and he's like a human totem pole, a lightning rod for magic, a shamanic leader with magic eyebrows who can harness the energy of the universe and bestow it on others with magical pointing and arms round shoulders and exceptionally flexible facial expressions. That would be missed by any set of players I guess.

When Keogh left last time.. it turned to shit.. Facts are facts. 

There's always more to say... That's the beauty of football. It binds people together by giving them something to talk shite about that both matters and doesn't. Three games is nothing but we'll treat them like they're everything and whilst, yes, the keeper looks shaky, the defence has been cut through like the silk on a SIlk Cut advert, the midfield hasn't got a grip and the attack mostly misfired, apart from that it's fine! We're going to win the league! 

In short, the question might be 'How many Steve's does it take to turn a shambles into glory?'

The answer is 'Actually. It only takes one and he'll buy you a washing machine and win you two LDV trophies, give a mental press conference where he leaves but then comes back and chuck in a lot of rounds of golf whilst he's at it - so with five of them, we should sort this out no problem'

If notthing else, we could get another Steve in as an advisor. That would be top craic.  

Basically, fuck knows if we'll be shite in 6 months or not - why do you expect me to know? Sometimes you start shit and end good. Sometimes you start good and end shit. Sometimes you start shit and end worse and so on - football is class like that - so fuck the future, live in the now and let's try and find how this lot fit together a bit better and fucking go for it cos we're Blackpool.

If we can't defend...

...ATTACK!

Onwards

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