Capitulation - the Mighty vs Luton Town

I'm driving home (see how I've cunningly I've subverted your expectations, by starting, not just at the end but after the end. There are no rules here. We do what we feel, this is samba, free form football blogging) and Steve Bruce is saying 'we just need a slice-a-luck, the rub of the green, the ball to drop for us' on the car radio. 

He doesn't sound convincing. He doesn't sound convinced. He's been doing this a long time, he tells Ian "you've made your point, now get off" Chisnall, and then he tells him it again. Then again. What we learned, therefore, in several different ways, in case we missed it the first (and the second) time is that we're unlucky according to Steve Bruce and Steve Bruce has been doing this a long time.  Ian "Jeremy Paxman" Chisnall asks Steve "worselves" Bruce such thrusting questions as "when you're down the bottom, that's the luck you get eh Steve?" and Bruce is delighted to bite his question off to answer in the affirmative. 

Perhaps that's good communication. Like saying "442" 3 times before a game, in case the lads get confused and think it's another formation, which it isn't. It's 442. Do your best, keep it tight, don't get in front of the ball too often, don't let them get behind you. Say it all three times. I've been doing this a long time. I'm going for a cup of tea, any questions to Steve or Steve or whatever the other two are called...

Etc. 

I'm wondering to myself though - If we just need a ''slice-a-luck' (that's for sure)' then why are we paying probably the most expensive managerial setup in the club's entire history loads of money? IF football is just this simple - that sometimes the luck is with you, and sometimes it's not, then why bother with all the Steves and the sporting directors to appoint the Steves and the data team to give the data to the Steves for the Steves to ignore (cos fuck me, the data is shite when you look at it and says 'nah, lads, it's not luck, we're actually objectively shit) when actually, you could just get some lucky heather and give the job to Matty Blinkhorn once you've doused him in holy water and we'd be up the league in no time. 

Is it that simple? 

The game. We started really well. It's all relative to the season so far but for the first time in what feels like forever, we actually put a few passes together, pressed a bit and played a bit of football. CJ scored a CJ goal, in that he managed to hit it straight at the keeper but it went through him but no one cares, all goals are great goals but if you don't feel the love when CJ gets something right, then you have no soul and probably would advocate putting dogs and cats stuck in an animal sanctuary down as a 'waste of resources' and probably don't bother with meals, replacing them with those 'huel' drink things because they're 'more time efficient' - CJ is CJ and we're stuck with him and yes, he does CJ things, but sometimes (it doesn't happen all that often I grant you, but it does) he's ace and tonight, he had a good night so fucking enjoy the moment or just accept you are dead inside. Ole! 

Then the curse of Steve Bruce's weirdly misfiring, increasingly shoddy looking 90s football funhouse* struck again. In this respect, we are unlucky. Perhaps the Steves have run over some cats or walked under some ladders or broken some mirrors, but just as Imray collects a ball beautifully, he goes down screaming. It looks to me like an impact injury and worryingly like something snapped in his knee as he lands on his weight bearing leg after leaping for the ball. In such circumstances, it's tempting to bemoan our luck, like we're the ones suffering - but we'll get another right back (in fact, here's Andy Lyons, right now) and Danny Imray has only one career and as Andy Lyons knows, only too well, an injury at the wrong moment can set you back so many years, just as everything seems to be going so well. 

*at this stage, the funhouse is basically just an old garden shed with no windows or door, and a hole in the roof, with just the words "Andrey Canchelskis" (spelled wrong) scribbled in faint crayon on a dirty piece of paper pinned to the wall

We'd knocked it about nicely - Bowler had found a bit of space (and set up the goal), Morgan found runs with cute passes, we'd won some corners and CJ got to the byline and hung a beautiful cross up for Taylor to nod wide - but Imray's injury is a disruption to the rhythm. Luton look really tepid initially, but they warm a bit to their task and get some crosses in. Fortunately they seem to have not packed a striker for their trip away to the seaside, so the crosses are fairly moot. We do nearly concede a very surreal goal, where BPF runs out, tackles a player like an outfielder inside his own box and then everyone sort of just stops until, obligingly Luton hack the ball over the bar. It seemed as if we'd broken down inexplicably. 

We get to half time without great incident and without any of remaining decent players losing a limb or spontaneously combusting. 

--- 

The bar is very low, but I'd say that's the best we've played in terms of moving the ball and moving for each other. It's not like it was the Milan of Gullit, Van Basten etc or anything - but we've looked vaguely competent and Luton have obliged us, by leaving lots of space to break into which suits how we play. 

--- 

Ye gods, CJ has done it again. It's the same goal more or less, with Jordan Brown setting the move away with a great tackle and long pass, Taylor playing the Bowler role and the shot again striking the keeper (but, to be fair, being more confidently placed.) I'll admit freely, I didn't have 'CJ scoring a brace and Blackpool in charge of the game' on my bingo card for this point tonight, but this is the wonder of football. It surprises. It's always the same, but always different. 

At this point (somewhere around an hour) I'm feeling unexpectedly relatively pleased with things - it's not been vintage by anyone's definition, but Casey looks calm, Ihiekwe has suddenly found some form in the last few weeks and looks actually decent, Coulson hasn't been shredded too often by a paper shredder winger so far, Lyons is coping with being chucked in, Jordan Brown looks the best midfielder on the pitch, Bowler has shown some moments of languid quality, Taylor, I actually really like - I know that people expect striker who cost money to score goals and that sort of thing, but I like that he doesn't look that fussed about it - his general play is good, his touch, his weight of pass and so on suits bringing others into play. He seems to have a certain patience about him and there's just a quality to some things he does that feels mature for his age. If we were any good, I think he'd be very good. Maybe this is the loose foundation of a team? 

That's the thing. How you look at it is so coloured by the result at the time and as I'm thinking the above, it looks like we're heading for a comfortable win. We even manage to create a few more half chances, Bowler acrobatically hooks over after more good work from CJ, CJ has a couple of efforts for the hat trick. Luton look shit. A shit team in a shit kit the colour of some kind of watery lime flavoured ice pop. 

Then they suddenly don't look shit and all the optimistic appraisals are in the bin. 

They make some subs. They bring on a couple of tricky lads and a big lad. The big lad reminds me of someone, A kind of pigeon toed, barrel chested someone. He has a certain trot and a certainty in his own presence. He looks for contact with his defender, he's happy playing with his back to goal. Fuck me, I miss Gaz Madine and this lad is the dream we all dream. We all dream of a mobile Gaz Madine and they've got one. We don't have any kind of Gary Madine, mobile or otherwise or even just Kylian Kouassi, because why the fuck would a side with a keeper who can ping it on demand and who play a lot of direct balls need something as frivolous as a physical presence up front? That would be absolutely ridiculous! 

Luton are now a completely different prospect. Their crosses have purpose, our defence is swarming to try and prevent the ball reaching fake Norwegian Madine and that means shape isn't kept. There's space for players to run into. A corner. He heads just wide. 

We make some subs. None of them are what I want to do. Horsfall is a big lad. Why not fight fire with fire? We bring on first Tom Bloxham, who does one really good thing that might have led to CJ's hattrick, then runs about like he's been challenged in the dressing room to perform the game in the manner of someone humping bags of wet sand on his shoulders. In contrast to their new striker, he doesn't seek contact with his centre half and barring that one initial run, he doesn't pull players to him. rather seeks space. He needs to learn how to play this role or we need to use him differently because he's talented, but this is pointless cos he just can't play off long balls and centre forwards in teams like this need to be able to. 

Then they score. It's deflected (there's the luck that you can only see if you've been in the game as long as Steve Bruce) and a bit against the run of play if you look across the half, but it's not against the run of the most recent 5 minutes, which has been increasing Luton pressure. 

We make more subs. Now we'll see Horsfall. We don't. Instead we get Emil Hansson, who, being the weight of breath of wind and about the height of a milk bottle seems unlikely to nullify them as well as Lee Evans who is brilliant at pointing and having a huff at his own players, but again, when I last checked, not really likely to disrupt a side playing around a target man very much as he's not a) central defender or b) very good at running about when nippy lads are doing stuff. When I last checked, Horsfall was one of the best defenders in League 1 and we'd outbid Stockport (who are reasonably minted) for his contract - so it seems, to be quite frank, really fucking weird that he never, ever comes on, even when there's a threat that looks absolutely made for him to deal with. 

What follows is a bit like what happens if you put an ice sculpture on top of a fire. What previously looked to have some shape and form, just melts into a puddle. It's a shame filled pool of piss from a child who has been bullied to the point of terror. We look frightened, we can't get hold of the ball, we twat it away, we twat it into the stand, we try and run with it but get nowhere and Luton press. They press with quite a lot of patience and move the ball, trying to work the angle. They manage to fizz it across the face of goal a few times, they force BPF into a few punches and a good claim, they work the defenders, they force some blocks. It's not like they're hitting the woodwork or forcing double finger tip saves every 30 seconds - but it's relentless and we look rattled and lost. 

Then more of that bad luck that only 45 years of footballing experience allows you spot. Never mind the relentless pressure. They get a penalty. Just a random event that has nothing to do with allowing them to play in our half and on the edge of our box pretty much at will. I don't know if it's a penalty or not. The big lad flicks it on, a little lad and Casey come together with some force. It's hard to tell who upends who. I don't write this to be definitive - watch it, make your own mind up, I don't know. It's given and after some scuffling in the box between Albie and some lads twice his size, it's dispatched and the brief bit of optimism I felt half an hour before now feels foolish.  

They end the game on top.

For fucks' sake 'Pool. 

---

Before the game, I honestly struggled to find any optimism. We've been rank bad this year - yes, we've had a half here or there where we've matched the opposition - but we've never really looked dominant and we seem to treat matching other league 1 teams for a bit as a sign of some kind of earth shaking progress as if we're not a side who stated the ambition of promotion at the outset, but a plucky set of chancers in a league of giants.

We didn't 'dominate tonight, but there were points in the game where we played well enough and seemed to have the measure of Luton. I quite enjoyed the novelty of us scoring and having a few attacks! What we failed to do, in any way shape or form, was react to a side changing their shape and trying a different approach. We also wilted visibly in the face of a side who were clearly fit and able to play hard up to the final whistle - we just fell into two banks and sat deep and invited pressure, like a little dog, backing off nervously and barking, but never biting, looking sluggish and weak in comparison. 

I like some of these players as individuals and actually, my assessment of their potential isn't that different to what I felt on an hour - There's palpable ability in them - but collectively, we're just not playing well at all and even tonight, where we managed a few more shots than some previous games, we didn't really create an overwhelming amount and both goals were breakaways. There's nothing wrong with a breakaway goal - but we've not scored a single 'well worked' goal that has come as a result of collective team play, movement, a spell of pressure, this season. In fact, (a fun fact even,) CJ's brace tonight represents literally 50% of our goals from open play this year. 

Maybe Luton were lucky with the penalty (I genuinely don't know) but we were lucky on several occasions where balls across the box just didn't find a foot or a head, or when a Luton player leaned back in the first half and blazed it over.  Maybe being in football management for a long time teaches you that when that happens, it's not good luck but brilliant judgement by you and the coaching staff. Maybe having XG of less than 1 for game after game after game (and by far the lowest overall in the division) is bad luck, but when you score from a mishit shot the keeper should save, it's not 'good luck' but a master stroke. 

I thought we played ok for a bit tonight - but this is the problem - we need points. We need wins. Not 'signs' that we're 'getting there' - We need to move up the table, fast. The Steve Bruce Experiment is utterly pointless unless we're doing well and we're really not. It doesn't lay groundwork for anything, it's not some imaginative ideas that are being slowly picked up by the squad - it's a veteran manager playing simple football, based on withstanding pressure and hitting on the break. It's simple enough stuff and it's not working. It worked a bit tonight, but then it didn't work. It didn't work when everyone was fit any more than it has worked with injuries. It's worked for the odd moment here and there this year, but overall, it's so far from working convincingly it's actually painful to think about. 

Onward

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Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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What a difference a goal makes...: the Mighty vs Barnsley

The sky is grey. The rain is endless. It's like being in Bladerunner only without as much neon and a few less flying cars. I love days like this. The bowl of the stadium wraps round you and it's like there's nothing else beyond it, just an unrendered void. It's like an uncanny unfinished depiction of a location in a computer game, everything in the immediate crystal clear, but outside of that, just a strange fog. Even the tower is rendered hazy and indistinct, the very top of it disappearing into the murk.

I don't know why Horsfall doesn't play, I don't know why Bloxham isn't worth a place on the bench. I do like that Banks and Bowler start and Ennis and Fletcher are reunited. I'm not sure how I feel about Morgan and Honeyman as the midfield pairing. It's probably the best technically, but we've not made much use of technical qualities of late and it's very small and I feel like they're very similar players. We shall see.

---

The game starts with an immediate feel of intensity in comparison to Tuesday. Barnsley look well organised and technically able. Possession changes hands and straight away a pattern is established that last the length of the first half, we knock a couple of hopeful balls forward for Ennis to try and sniff out, whereas they bring the ball down and play some joined up football, finding particular joy in threading it behind our full backs for their overlapping wing backs, a route that seems to work on both sides and brings them their first chance, a sharp near post effort that is uncomfortably close and as with so many goals we've conceded this year, worryingly easy to create. 

We claim our first chance and it comes from some great vision from Bowler to find the man in space and ends with a Scott Banks shot being well blocked and a Pool corner. Barnsley respond with another crisp move, 1,2,3 passes slice us open on our right and then a good cross and there's only a great Coulson tackle between them and a goal. Pool answer back with another pointless long ball, then a great Imray run that comes to nothing in the end, followed by another good Imray run that is partially snuffed out, but sees the ball balloon up, then be shifted wide to Banks, who sees the gap, adjusts himself well and with a low drive, draws a very good save from Cooper.

Their keeper has very little to do, but what he does, he does well. His touch is sensational for a goalkeeper - a couple of times he kills a ball stone dead with his feet and another time, he uses his chest to cushion the ball with deftness that puts some of the forward play to shame. 

As the half wears on (and it does wear, this isn't a vintage Pool performance) I become more frustrated with the strategy of 'get ball, pass it a couple of times and then lump it forward and give it away' - from one of these moment, a completely aimless ball lands with the Tykes who immediately return it to the heart of our box, Coulson, for no explicable reason cuts it out when it was clearly headed for BPF and turns an attempt at defending into a perfect lay off for Bansley shot. A few minutes later, equally inexplicably, as we're just starting to form a break, he makes a square pass to the wrong team that they shank wide. We get away with a few to be honest, where they should test BPF but don't. 

I've started counting the aimless balls forward and I'm up to eight. Another one is flung down the line, that's nine. Then we chip it up towards Ennis, but without giving him anything to run onto - ten. Then another one over the top that runs out of play... eleven. Each time we're just giving the ball back to the other team. 

Bowler has looked off it. Whilst he's neat and tidy in his passing, he's distinctly more 'underwhelming cheap battery from B+M' than mains electric danger.  The acceleration isn't there as he tries to wriggle through a couple of times without success. At one point, late in the half, a burst of acceleration sees him limping and clutching the back of his leg and everything screams 'player who hasn't played a lot for ages feeling the effects of playing' and all the excitement and hype seems foolish. He plays on though but he doesn't seem to move freely thereafter to me. 

--- 

We've been poor. As so often this year, we've sat really deep and let Barnsley control the game - they've got up the pitch with ease and though they haven't turned their dominance into many clear cut chances, they've hit the heart of our box quite frequently and been in what Neil Critchley would term 'good areas' a lot more than us. We've been wasteful in possession and our attempts to play have been quite pitiful in comparison to what has seemed like a much more sophisticated awareness of movement and team shape/position in the Barnsley ranks. We need to be better. 

---

We are better - the second half sees a reversal in the pattern of the game. Whilst we don't exactly come out imbued by the collective spirit of Johan Cruyff, we're definitely more joined up and crucially, we don't sit so deep. Barnsley find it harder to play the neat triangles from earlier as their attempts to pass and move are more aggressively disrupted and this half, it is them who seem to resort more often to the aimless pass and us who possess a bit more purpose about our play. 

Chances though, are hard to come by - we make something at the near post that is snuffed out before the most exciting passage of play in the game, a helter skelter 15 seconds of chaos in which, Ennis gets desperately blocked at the far post by a combination of keeper and defender - the latter goes down injured, but we play on. The ball is put back in, Fletcher wins it, but appears to be having his shirt pulled as he does... finally the ball is back with Ennis, his touch is heavy, but he remains in possession, until the still prone Tykes defender hooks out a leg from on floor which, if he wins the ball, seems to go through Ennis to do so and the Kop screams for a penalty with some conviction. Shit refs again. Ole ole. 

What else did we create? I'm struggling a bit. We played 'better' in that we were no longer sitting ducks for Barnsley attacks but we weren't exactly ripping into them either. Albie had a shot from the edge of the box which forced a routine save. BPF nearly put us through with some good vision from his kicks a couple of times. At some point Ihiekwe got underneath a header from a corner that a player behind him might have got over - but neither side was looking hugely dangerous.

Probably more notable than the chances were the injuries and general fitness. Bowler went off and I guess today was one of those games he'll need several of to get back to fitness. If, on Tuesday, he moved freely and with a baletic grace reminiscent of his glory period, today he looked heavy legged. More troublingly, Honeyman sits down and immediately signals to the bench and then, after a tackle, Scott Banks is helped off, limping and struggling to put weight on one leg. Given Banks has a history of injury troubles and definitely has displayed some much needed quality and guile in what we've seen so far of him, the latter worries me most. 

For Barnsley, David Mcgoldrick really stood out, knitting their play together and drifting into pockets of space. Late in the game, his movement saw him receive it twice in the same move and then, just dally a touch too long in his lay off which meant a moment extra for us to close down and Peacock Farrell to make the angle and in the end an easy save. He's withdrawn moments later and it feels like once he's off, Barnsley aren't quite as joined up. 

The rain has continued to pour down, the pitch is wet, the play is quite full blooded which is always a certain kind of pleasure - but it isn't really feeling like out and out chaos - more a series of disrupted moves and two sides deadlocked. 

By now, the board has gone up for injury time and I'm starting to think about how to write this up. I don't generally stand there thinking 'what am I going to say about this?' because that's not how I want to roll -, I'm there for the game not the writing, usually I just see what's in my head after the game and go with that - but today, there's not a lot there to distract me so I'm starting to compile a list of things that are equally as dull as watching us this season - a wallpaper catalogue, Keir Starmer telling a 'funny' anecdote, listening to a HR induction talk... 

... we have a corner, the Kop roars in anticipation but I'm not feeling it. I don't believe today. This is 0-0, it has 0-0 written all over it in indelible ink, 0-0 is fucking tattooed on this game, branded into its very flesh with red hot metal, chiseled into the granite of the thing,... the list goes on... washing the car, going shopping for shit boring household things, putting the ironing away, which is even shitter than ironing itself... the corner comes in, it's headed away, I knew it. The thing is, when you watch enough football, you can feel a game. It's wisdom, it comes with age and experience... we're not scoring today... being on a bus that takes a lot longer than the journey would in a car, bad phone signal, filling in a poorly designed form on a council website... CJ goes to chase the lost cause. The Kop screams for a foul that isn't given - it's too late anyway, it's just not happening... milky tea that isn't strong enough, undercooked chips that haven't crisped up, traffic jams in general, but especially when created by poorly timed temporary lights...

...but maybe, I actually can't read a game and maybe, I know fuck all because... 

CJ has got up, CJ is running, his, left foot guiding the ball like a hockey stick, he's still going... a pass into the box, it's held up by someone (Olly Casey it turns out) and laid off and... oh my, I can see this before it happens, there's a gap in the bottom left corner and I know Jordan Brown has seen it from the way he shapes as he runs onto it and the list is now changing to be a very different one, the rush of blood as you launch yourself from a great height, the feeling as you clock off on a Friday with the weekend ahead of you, the moment where a cold pint hits your lips on a hot, hot day... the strike is crisp, the strike is low, it seems to bend as it skims the turf, the keeper has spotted it later than Brown and is diving, but he's never reaching it, as the ball flies, the intake of breath is collective and as the ball hits the net, the release, the roar, the sheer fucking disbelief and joy is tremendous. Players hurl themselves towards to crowd, there are hashtagscenes and hashtaglimbs and shirts off and goalkeepers running up the pitch and even Steve Bruce allows himself a little clenched fist jig and the fella next to me thumps me in delight and I thump the air and the tangle of bodies, leaping and thrashing arms and flags in the Kop goes on and everything is good as the rain washes everything in a dreamy haze... 

The whistle. Players leap into each other's arms. That clearly lifted them as much as it lifted us. 

--- 

I don't know what to make of this game in the context of the overall. We were better defensively and I thought Coulson had a particularly good second half. For all he was culpable in the first half of loose play, he was aggressive, dominant even in the second half. The centre back pairing looked as good as it has all season and Imray was again the best player on the pitch. BPF's kicking was strong and at times in the second half he looked as valid a creative outlet as anyone. 

Going forward though, I thought we again struggled. We did get higher in the second half, but given the talent on the pitch, we didn't really make anyone particularly shine in an attacking sense. Banks' injury worries me as he looks the most likely to get a shot away and we do seem still to be very much about one of two things - either, catching a defender out with a direct ball for Ennis to turn onto or a moment of individual skill - a run from a wide player. There's still little sign of the convincing fluid team play that you'd feel a promotion chasing team (and we are still 22nd!) would need to have in their locker. 

Confidence though, is everything. Confidence can be the difference between timid and brave, between safety and risk. You could see at the end the sheer relief of the players. Whilst this was still far from convincing display of all out total football, the reaction to the win and the obdurate defending wasn't the sign of a side who have given up on each other or who don't care. We've shown we can shut an OK side out (and Barnsley are certainly nowhere near the worst teams in the league) and grind out a result - that doesn't make a season - but it certainly is a positive in comparison to previous weeks. 

Win next week and we could be 15th. Truly nosebleed stuff. 

Onward

You can follow MCLF on facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email If you appreciate the blog and judge it worth 1p or more, then a donation to one of the causes below which help kids and families in Blackpool would be grand.

Home-Start Blackpool Food Bank

Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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Some straws to clutch? - the Mighty vs Barrow

Lets be very clear - anything I write has to be consumed with a healthy side portion of 'it's only Barrow reserves in a glorified friendly' flavoured scepticism - but let's also be clear. This blog is nothing but an attempt to write about the experience of supporting a football team who often aren't very good at football and if you can't enjoy winning 5-0 and watching some (relative to the diet of grim, grey gruel we've been served to date) enjoyable and (again, relatively speaking) inventive football, then this isn't the blog for you and you can fuck off and read something else. 

Yes, you may well say 'MCLF, you hollow eyed spectre at the feast, in the last blog, you were telling us there was nothing to cling to and the numbers (the sacred data, behold the pressing stats, fall at the feet of heat map and grovel ye mere minion) told a story of abject misery, it's a bit rich to now claim you're some kind of chronicler of joy and bringer of light - isn't the truth that you flip back and forward according to whatever has just happened in manner of one of the slightly threadbare St George's Crosses attached to the Bloomfield Road lamp posts whipping around in the changeable pre-match wind this evening?' 

To which, I'd say, yes, guilty as charged. Being a football fan is thus. One week your down, the next week your up. I could find no straws to clutch at, I have found a hay bail tonight and you are going to chew on the straw because it's my fucking blog and I'll say whatever I like. Just wait till we get to point 5. If you're already annoyed, you'll be apoplectic by then... 

I'm not going through the game in some kind of weird and frankly wholly unnecessary detail like I normally do cos I'm too tired and it's the tinpot cup. Watch the highlights. Some stuff happened. Mostly it was fine. The first goal was lucky and gifted to us, though Fletch did well and Banks was sharp, the second CJ pulled out the cross of his life and Fletcher scored the kind of header I wish he'd score more of, Bowler set up one with a lovely spin and pass and Scott Banks scored with a simply brilliant finish. There was another goal but I've forgotten how that happened. As I say, watch the highlights. They're free. 

(This isn't a very good advert for blogging is it?) 

Actually, I've remembered it - it was Andy Lyon's heading home from a cross in a way he did so well for us and it was a really nice moment as Lyons has had a horrible time over a sustained period after making such a promising start. He's suffered personal loss, he's had a horrific injury and neither Critchley or Bruce seem to rate him very highly. In fact, Lyons is probably just about the only person in Blackpool who pines for the days of Mad Mick because since then, it's been rubbish for him all round and that goal was the one I cheered most on an evening of fairly sedate reactions. The fact Tony Parr then awarded it to Fraser Horsfall just about summed up Andy Lyons lot at the moment. He did ok tonight and the game will do both him and Zac Ashworth, (who played well and provided some balance to the centre of defence) no harm at all. I hope Bruce hasn't written both of them off, because both of them have something to offer, not least in respect of being the right shape pegs for the holes we may sometimes have. (The keeper too, had very little to do, but looked perfectly competent and certainly less jittery than he had in preseason.)

What I do want to do is pick out how tonight differed from previous games (aside from the obvious fact we were playing Barrow reserves in a glorified friendly, in case you've forgotten what I said about 4 paragraphs ago) 

1: Horsfall carries the ball out and sets up attacks - I really liked what I saw from him in this respect. For the first ten minutes of the game, he looked rusty. He looked like he needed calibrating and he shanked a really poor square pass and totally mistimed a tackle. Then, it was like he got his eye in and I thought he looked composed and crucially, vocal at times. What I particularly liked (and to be honest, hadn't expected from a 'big unit' centre half) was that he was keen to receive the ball, and when he got it, drove forward without hesitation - something which linked the defence and midfield well and made us far less prone to going back to front. Having a player at the back willing to advance 30 yards into the other teams half makes a big difference to the ability of others to then run off them and where the move starts from. 

2: Having wide players in wide positions - Emil Hansson missed chances he should have scored (and also nearly scored with a lovely run and low backlift shot in the second half, which would have been a glorious goal) - but he was dangerous in a way that Morgan or Honeyman haven't been when playing wide. Scott Banks was rightly man of the match for what was a really good all round performance - he played on both flanks, but also showed himself adept at playing up alongside the strikers in a kind of impromptu front 3. He's got the ability to use both feet and to go inside or outside. As much as Bowler's cameo was eye catching (more in a moment) Banks looked perfectly capable of slotting into this side and adding something that hasn't been there - a bit of craft and guile and positional fluidity. 

3: Josh Bowler coming on in the tinpot cup against a threadbare League Two side shouldn't really happen. Rightfully, we should be bringing on some academy kid that we'll all say encouraging and hopeful things about but will next be seen playing for Droylsden Town. Again, in case you are really hellbent on ignoring my prior instructions, we were only playing Barrow reserves, but the Bowler who played that 20 or so minutes looks a more rounded player than the Bowler I remember - maybe it's tactical freedom, maybe it's just the opposition weren't very good, but far from hugging the right touchline and sprinting, this Bowler wandered and found pockets of space, drifted and tried to (and indeed did) slip players in and provided a glorious reminder of ⚡WHY HE'S SO FUCKING EXCITING⚡ when he took the ball down on the turn and fairly lashed an effort that (in my mind at least) hit both the post and the bar (but might actually have only hit one of them. It seemed to happen so quickly. If the fact on Saturday he dribbled in his own box and lost the ball and we nearly conceded reminded me of one side of Bowler, that moment reminded me why I'll forgive him pretty much anything because it was a flash of a player from a totally different footballing universe as 99% of Blackpool players I've ever watched. When he's good, he's fucking sublime. 

4: There was a general sense of both desire and enjoyment. We were 5-0 up and we kept looking for the next goal. Taylor looked involved in a way he hasn't in some games and his goal seemed to breath some life into him, Evans wasn't immaculate by any means, but he prompted and spread play and provided a bit of willingness to look up and use the width and Jordan Brown gave us some midfield control - yes, obviously, one more time, in the context you'd expect it - but we actually had a midfield. We knocked it about well, we had some movement and we looked at times like a team who actually had some collective confidence in each other. One moment we played out from the back was actually really nice football and something that, yes, is easy at 4-0 up, but also something I've seen no evidence we'd have had the belief to try up to this point. 

5: This one is a scary prospect. I don't really want to commit to paper because it might make it happen again and the idea is just so wrong it's ridiculous. I'm going to say it though... 

CJ was actually ok at left back 

This is a ridiculous statement to make because if Hayden Coulson isn't a left back then CJ is definitely not - but he, tonight, (yes for fucks sake, do I have to keep saying it, with all the required caveats applied yet again and multiplied by several factors,) he actually was pretty effective. CJ needs the ball in front of him and running from deep, he got it, multiple times in a way he hasn't had on the wing. Barrow didn't offer very much going the other way, but his athleticism (the one attribute you can't deny he possesses) was also useful in getting him back. CJ is quick over longer distances, not an explosive accelerator and repeatedly he'd surge from deep to overlap Hansson and actually, this was the most use he's been on a football pitch for ages as we weren't asking him to be a 'midfield creator' but a runner who, through his runs would create space for others to play and an extra option as opposed to being the key point in the attack. And yes, it was Barrow reserves and yes, a better team might rip him to bits and yes, he's CJ Hamilton and all of that - but you can only say what you see (Roy) and that is what I saw. 

To conclude, Bruce made a strong statement in picking a very strong 18 for the game. This was a bit of no win match - play as we did (pretty convincingly) and you can't say anything other than 'well, we *should* be pretty convincing against a rejigged low budget League 2 side in terrible form' and that's fair. What we achieved tonight was no better than par for the course. It wasn't all roses either - we looked worryingly vulnerable from set pieces - I thought we looked reasonably compact in open play, but at least 3 or 4 times set pieces caused what seemed like unreasonable panic. This is definitely not just a case of bodies or individuals - because that seems a pattern no matter who is in the side. 

What it did achieve was showing what a few players could do and making a few cases for Saturday. If anything, it felt a bit like the preseason game we never had - a pretty routine dispatching of a side below our level, but with some encouraging elements and some actual football played. We never had that game in what was a disrupted and quite unsatisfying build up to what has been a shockingly poor start so who knows, maybe that little bit of belief will develop as a result of this game where, no there wasn't the same pressure - but nonetheless there was a certain expectation and something to prove - to each other on the pitch perhaps as much as to anyone else. 

It also showed what I think we already know - we possess some players who are capable of moments of magic and whose skills are beyond doubt. Bowler and Banks both provided moments which were such quality they seemed pretty much unsporting in the context of the opposition and the competition - whilst wingers alone can't fix the entire structure of the team, the understanding that we have quality and if we get the ball to that quality, the can hurt teams is an important one for the team to have. If you've got a player who can cut inside and shoot or can drift and slip a clever pass - then it encourages the rest to maybe be a bit more careful with the passes, to maybe not go back to front every time. Essentially, teams need to believe in the team - and the mavericks, the 'luxuries' as some might term them can ignite that because they can change games. They become the reason to tackle, the reason to run, the reason to block shots and so on - because with them, you always have a chance...  

I think the best way to sum it up is - I only really went tonight because I was that fed up that I wanted to either see some hope, or see it all fall apart and move on. After the game, I can't get carried away as if everything that's been wrong will magically be right - but I'm now looking forward to Saturday and to seeing if Banks and Bowler can look as effortlessly dangerous as tonight against a better side and if Horsfall can slot in a provide some of the drive from back to front and if we can get the balance right and look a legitimately competitive side in our division in a way we haven't really looked yet. There is at least some hope that we can be better than we've been and that, for what it's worth is pretty much all I've subsisted on for most of the last 30 odd years of going to Bloomfield Road, of listening to us on transistor radios, of checking live text under the table at family events, of trekking off in the car to shit towns when I could be doing something more worthwhile. It's the same for any of us. If we knew what would happen next, it would be shit. We live in hope and whilst when the future arrives, it is often disappointing, but from the perspective of now, it's always the future and always unknown and always contains possibilities. The world is as yet unmade and to give up on that and the idea that tomorrow might bring us something better than today would be to give up on life. 

Fuck me, that's a pretentious ending and possibly the most overblown way to describe 'feeling slightly better about Barnsley at home' that anyone has ever come up with. I blame Josh Bowler. He has this effect on me. 

Onward

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Steve Bruce's Tangerine Army?

Football fans are fickle as fuck. I am a football fan. Therefore, I am fickle as fuck. You wouldn't have to reach very far back in the MCLF archive to find me eulogising Steve Bruce and extolling the virtues of the 90s football fun house with its wingers and its pleasing throwback playground simplicity in contrast to the AI driven, algorithmic, systems football favoured by many others. I lavished praise on his release and rebirth of Carey, rebooting of Fletcher and indulgence of Apter. All of this happened and all of this is still true, but time has ticked on... 

I like Steve Bruce. I didn't really expect to when we appointed him, but he's shown himself to be a man of charm, intelligence and, through some really difficult circumstances that go far beyond football and the remit of this blog, amazing dignity. He's shown himself able to care for players and to speak with honesty and depth about football. He's erudite and engaging, in a way I had never previously given him credit for and in a way that many of our recent managers haven't been. It isn't, therefore the case that I'm in some kind of frothing rage, wanting to 'get this prick out of our club.' 

It's also too simple to just say 'football is a results game' as if that justifies everything. It's one of the stupidest sayings in the world. All sport is 'results driven' - that's literally the point of sport. If you went fishing and didn't put bait on your hook, then you aren't actually fishing, no one plays golf purely for the walk and sacks of the bit where you try to put the ball in the hole in the least shots you can. The point of all of it is competition against others or against yourself. It is to try and win otherwise it just isn't sport, football or not. 

There is, however, a bit more to it than that. Winning doesn't have to come immediately. Sometimes you need to take your time, practice your skills, hone a new technique, develop your confidence. At times, in the moment, the purpose is simply to get better and the results come later. In terms of the prior images, the fisherman might try out a new bait, the golfer might work on their swing, in football terms that might involves blooding a set of young players with an eye on the future or installing some new tactical ideas. History is littered with teams that didn't quite work, until they did and then who looked stronger for the fact they'd been through a period of development in contrast to sides who might have got short term gains, but who were built on less solid foundations. 

So far, this reads a bit like a 'plea for patience' - I'm almost convincing myself as I write that 'we just need to give time and wait for it to come good' - but this is not what I'm trying to say, as much as I'd really like to. 

So far we've played 8 games in all competitions. That's not a huge sample size, but it's enough to say a pattern has emerged. It's not a definitive pattern, but nonetheless, there's recurring evidence and we could feasibly say we can see trends at work, or at least establishing themselves. 

Firstly, we keep conceding bad goals. As a rule, I'm not hugely bothered about conceding 'bad goals' from time to time. All goals against you feel bad, the myth that it's only ok to concede an unstoppable drive from 25 yards is rubbish. No team goes through the season without conceding goals that couldn't feasibly, in an alternative universe, have been stopped. Football is simply too much chaos for a defence to make the right collective choices every single time. 

We keep conceding really bad goals though. Like, every fucking week we let the other team score one or two really easy goals and it's not even when we're playing teams who present a real threat. It's not like Exeter, Northampton, Stevenage presented a maelstrom of total football movement, false nines and overloads. They weren't sides full of world class footballers. They're just quite well organised teams of fairly midtable-ish players. We get undone by the simplest of football and we look worried by the most basic of tactics. We have conceded a few less goals in the last couple of games, but we played an out of form Bolton and Northampton who don't score goals and in neither game did we really convince. We lost to the Cobblers and we could have lost to Bolton. Simply 'not conceding quite as many' isn't really 'turning a corner' 

I'm not generally someone who wants to hang defenders from the lampost for their missed tackles because I'm more interested in the attacking play. It's not as simple as 'finding defending boring' - I don't, I love defending, I was first a goalkeeper and then a defender when I played football and the art of reading the game, timing a tackle, making an interception, throwing yourself full length to block a shot is every bit as engaging as a shot or a pass. I miss Richard Keough and Daniel Grimshaw nearly as much as Gary Madine and Jerry Yates so to speak - I just don't subscribe to the idea that a good defence is more important than a good attack - If you don't have the ability to go forward, you end up under pressure and as above, football is too much chaos for defenders to keep guessing correctly forever. An attack is a defence so to speak, because whilst you attack, you don't need to defend but a defence isn't an attack cos no matter how well you sit in, it doesn't ever score a goal. 

I want to reference numbers in this piece - not because numbers are everything, but it's important not just to opine. Who cares what I think - I'm no one and more to the point, I'm a fan and fans aren't objective. Lose and we hurt, win and we get carried away. I'm no different. What then, does the data say? 

Defensive stats are really not great - We've got the 8th worst XGa (essentially, how likely we are to concede goals) and the 4th worst ratio of shots conceded per game - so, put simply, if we'd cut out a few of the the shit goals we've conceded, we'd still be losing plenty of games because we've given away a lot of good chances. We've got the lowest rate of successful tackles in the division and rank 18th in the possession table. It's perfectly possible to win games with low possession, but if you also can't tackle well, then you're not going to win the ball back very much and therefore be under pressure a lot. 

What about going forward? 

I've watched all of our football this year and some of the preseason. I would say, out of the 1200 minutes or so of football I've watched, we've probably put together about 50 minutes of decent attacking play. We were 'ok' at the start of the second half yesterday and we obviously had a great 20 minutes against Huddersfield where Niall Ennis looked tremendous. Other than that, we've had a few moves, the odd moment here and there, but I genuinely couldn't name another spell where we've seemed like a convincing attacking force. We haven't just given goals away, we haven't really looked like scoring many either. 

Looking at the stats again backs this up. We have the lowest XG and the 3rd lowest ratio of shots per game in the division. XG isn't everything, but it's a pretty clear and simple indicator of the quality of chances you've created and we simply haven't created a lot. In fact, we've created the least of anyone. Which is pretty terrifying considering who we have in our squad compared to who some other teams have in theres.. In fact, we've scored slightly more than our XG would suggest - so we can't fall back on 'it's just individuals missing chances' with any real justification.

In terms of our work in between the boxes, the story isn't much better. Our passing is only the 16th best in the division, so fluid team football isn't really evident in the data. Breaking this down a bit further, we're 4th and 5th most likely to play either an accurate or inaccurate long pass (and 9th for long key passes) but only 14th in the tables for short passes (both inaccurate and accurate) and only 21st for short key passes which adds weight to the idea we're not playing very developed football, despite having some obviously gifted players who are capable of it. We're also only 16th in the league in terms of 'aerials won' which, given we evidently like to knock it long isn't ideal and perhaps suggestive of a mismatch between forwards and attacking style. 

There are lots of ways to attack, from side to side patience and probing, to all out direct bombardment and physical intimidation and whatever comes in between. There's no superiority to any of them. If they work, they work and if they don't, they don't. What they have in common is simple enough. If players are confident in each other, they will execute their skills faster, more instinctively and therefore, it will be harder to play against for the opposition. Man City zipping the ball round quickly with dizzying movement or John Beck's Cambridge hitting the corners with long balls and whipping them into the box for Dion Dublin share the simple truth that when on song and when playing with belief, the players doing what they need to do first time and fast makes it harder to play against. 

We look ponderous and uncertain at the back, but I'd argue we look as shapeless and mismatched going forward. Danny Imray and Josh Bowler combined reasonably on Saturday - it wasn't a razor sharp slicing to bits of the Northampton defence - but it was notably better than we've seen so far, simply because it was two players who looked on the same wavelength and whose attributes and gameplans seemed to compliment each other. I would genuinely struggle to identify any other attacking partnership so far this season where I could say that. It's felt, not so much like the players are interlocking cogs, where the clever arrangement of parts using the magic of gearing to make the machine capable of feats of great power as something shoved together where none of the teeth interlock and the cogs all just spin independently. 

'Patterns of play' is one of those phrases fans like me say because people on the radio and telly say it and it makes you sound like you know what you are talking about. I'm going to say it anyway, because it seems to best suit the situation. I've watched us lose a lot of games. I've watched us play a lot of poor football. I've been frustrated more than I've been in raptures in my time as a Blackpool FC fan. I'm not unfamiliar with a struggling side. What concerns me really quite deeply is that we don't seem to have any particular strategies. Whilst open play can be a battle more than a ballroom in league 1 and thus, expecting rhythm and grace every week is not realistic, we don't seem to have threatened at set pieces or worked out ways to maximise the moments where we've got the ball. We don't have the relationships and movement that suggest much awareness of each other, much less the telepathy that really good sides display. 

I gave Neil Critchley a hard time at the end of his tenure, because the football was so timid. On Saturday, I noticed a detail that I simply couldn't imagine happening under Critchley. I used to be so frustrated that we never took a quick throw, but watching us, not once, but twice manage to get the ball high up the pitch and win a throw in, only to fecklessly throw it straight to the opposition seemed to scream of 'lack of detail.'

Say what you like about the Polo shirted one, but 'lack of detail' was never a criticism that sprung to mind and yes, his obsession with possession absolutely hamstrung his second reign to a point where it reached absurdity - but 'releasing the shackles' shouldn't mean just giving haplessly giving possession away for no reason because the team doesn't have a prepared plan for the situation in front of them.  There's a happy medium between instinct and preparation and whilst you can easily imagine Critchley giving a 3 hour seminar on optimal relative positions at throw ins to minimise possession loss and that not really being the perfect input either for a group of league 1 players, I'm struggling a bit to see the influence of coaching in certain basic things at all on this group. 

We played 'a bit better' perhaps on Saturday - but we were playing a very limited side. I don't want to be snobby and aloof about it all, but Northampton's budget compared to ours isn't a big one. and their football is fairly straightforward. out of a certain necessity. They don't have many players with the quality of Ennis, Honeyman, Bowler and so on. We did make a few chances and maybe a draw would have been fairer. In fact, if I'm totally objective, a 1-0 win wouldn't have been a total injustice - but that said, losing the game, it doesn't feel as if we've been mugged either. It seemed like 15 minutes of us putting some pressure on in the second half, 10 minutes of them putting some pressure on in the first and us panicking a bit, a lot of nothing and then a sucker punch goal that felt like it was going to happen as we seemed to have given up after about 65 minutes and let them go at us. 

We had a couple of nice moves and definitely the moments of 'quality,' but we also had so many moments where basic passing was poor, either because players didn't have an obvious pass to make, or their execution of simple things wasn't great. The players who made the passes hit them long or short and the players who received the passes often seemed to make a meal of it and looked a bit surprised to be receiving the ball. Playing together didn't look natural to them, we didn't look comfortable in what we were doing and moves broke down as much as they reached a conclusion. Again, we should check against the numbers and again, sadly, the data shows us that one of the few metrics we're top half in is 'possession loss' (i.e. we lose the ball more than most teams) 

It isn't all 'awful' - there are some elements of the side that look ok and points of data that aren't as bad as the rest - but given the depth and quality of the squad, it would be incredible if we simply lost 5-0 every week and could take nothing at all from any game. There are scraps and straws to cling to but these are really good players. This isn't the post Brett injury Nigel Worthington era where yes, tactically we were painfully limited, but so were the players, this isn't Colin Hendry, who I still think is the worst football manager I've ever seen, but you have to say that he didn't have an embarrassment of riches at his disposal. This isn't even Mick McCarthy, who yes, served up some of the most ill suited tactics in relation to the squad at his disposal that I've ever known, but had the at least partial mitigation that he hadn't bought any of the players and was dealing with a injury blighted and demoralised squad playing in a division where we are financial minnows as opposed to having signed most of them and playing in a league where our spend makes us relatively big fish. 

To come back to the opening, what troubles me about things at the moment isn't simply that we're not very good and will get relegated - I think it's almost inevitable that we'll get better, because we have enough good players to do so and just playing together enough will forge some understanding. I don't really fear for our survival in the league because quality does tend to tell. That's not really a ringing endorsement though. Manchester United have been awful for 3 or 4 years but they're not going down because they've always got enough individual quality to win some games. In this league we are ultimately more Man U than we are Ipswich. 

What I fear is a bit more long term. Steve Bruce is a lovely bloke etc, but he's in the twilight of a career that seemed to have been over before he joined us. He is, even if we turn up next week and give a dazzling display of tikitaka and won 20-0, not the longer term future of Blackpool FC. Taking the club's words at face value, Bruce was designed to bring some stability and hand on something to the next guy. 

Right now, I'm not sure what is being handed over. Sometimes a manager's work can only be really evident in how the next man runs with things - a legacy perhaps of excellent fitness or of a club with very strong youth development, maybe a deeply embedded set of skills that a new manager can refine or compliment or a set of characters/culture that is positive and strong. There's an argument that we thrived last year because whilst Critchley had stifled the creativity of the side, he had instilled a set of non-negotiables. Critchley might not have got things tactically right on the match day but the training ground work was very sound perhaps. Bruce was therefore able to be an affable gaffer and focus on 'getting the lads playing a bit' as  the underlying work of forging a squad and a set of values was done. Further to this, Keogh had done a few weeks where we'd not been able to stop scoring goals, so part of that work was in progress. 

This season, it's not really evident at all that we've done this foundational stuff. We're currently playing a vaguely 442-ish style which isn't being executed with any particular zeal, energy or aggression and is something I very much doubt many future managers would want to run much further with. 90s football is fun, but only if it actually works (and every metric screams 'it isn't!) and whilst we might want it to, just as in the 90s the habits of the 50s were forgotten, there are legitimate football reasons why very few people adopt the tactical preferences of 3 decades ago. Anyone of my age or older will bemoan 'side to side football' but roll back to the 90s and people were complaining about things not being what they used to be just the same. Football, like life, evolves and we all want to be young and en vogue forever, but we all end up shouting at the clouds about 'bloody woke nonsense and young people today with their stupid ideas and their goalkeepers who pass it round and their tiktok, things ain't what they used to be, remember when you could buy a penny sweet and it cost a penny and the telly had the test card and you could buy proper petrol with good old lead, what's wrong with lead anyway, never did me any harm, bring back Gary Briggs, bring back moustaches, bring back white dog shit, I want my Sonny Carey/country/football/youth back etc' 

The problem is, football managers now are managing the players of today - players who've grown up in an entirely different era to the one we recall with fondness. It means nothing to them, just as the football of the 50s meant very little to me in my youth. I'd have been be as confused by being told to play 'wing half' with a brown leather ball and massive boots as potentially some of our players might be in being coached to play a particular way that doesn't wholly chime with their prior experiences. The past is, as they say, a foreign country. 

In terms of 'legacy' we've got a relatively expensive and not very young squad. There's quality there yes, but it's not overwhelmingly stacked with bright young talent. A new manager would inherit quite a lot of players who probably don't have huge resale value because of age but who have big contracts. We also don't look anything like a team yet, we don't seem overwhelmingly fit, we don't seem on the cusp of breaking into wild pass and move nirvana or to be incredibly together, so whether that notion of 'creating a culture' would be handed down to whoever comes next is quite uncertain at best. If anything, we looked a lot more 'together' last season than this. The big problem we have is, we probably need to make this set of players work, because this squad doesn't have a massive resale potential to fund its successor. 

On several occasions we've turned down the chance to give a young and yes, unproven, managers a job. We've invested significantly in experience and, by the standards of any prior Blackpool FC side large coaching staff. The idea of this, was presumably, that it would be more likely to bring success than gambling on someone unknown - we are possibly at a point where having sunk those costs and despite not seeing any huge evidence of anything that looks or smells like success, we can't really back out of it without incurring further costs. The irony of this is that we're possibly going to spend the season giving time to people who are at the end of their careers and thus have lost the opportunity to give time to someone younger to forge a career and learn their job. As we said at the start, Grayson, Mcmahon and Critchley all had difficult starts, but all of them were young managers with limited experience - appointing a young manager and granting them time is a risk - but it's a risk with a potential reward and a risk we've not taken of late aside from obviously, the time it worked with Critchley. 

In short, this is a difficult point for the club - it's hard not to sympathise with the ownership in the sense that, regardless of what you think of the decisions, you can't fault the effort this season (in several different ways.) It's hard not to continue to hope that, despite what is mounting evidence to the contrary, Steve Bruce will forge a fluent, fit fighting force that we all fall in love with, simply because it feels a bit like we have to and we're sick of bemoaning the lot of our football club. I want the likable man in the dugout to get the romantic end to his career and less romantically, I'm sure the owner wants the considerable investment in better pricing, better facilities, players and coaching staff to have some kind of positive outcome, whether in terms of simple good vibes or more cynically, in terms of making the club a more salable asset. I don't know what Sadler's long term intentions are, but either which way, a season of humdrum drudgery and underachievement isn't going to make him a happy deck shoe wearer. 

We've put a lot of eggs in the Bruce basket in other words. The problem for me as someone who wants to write positive stuff (no, really, I do), is that I'm increasingly unconvinced that we've got what it takes to make an omelette out of them, or perhaps, to put it more accurately, the omelette recipe we're using is simply not a very good one. This is a rubbery and tasteless football team at the moment - and yet there are definitely herbs and spices in the basket along with the eggs. A side that doesn't tackle well, gives up twice the chances it creates, passes long to players who aren't great in the air and bypasses players who are good at passing isn't a blueprint for success. 

My opinions are far from definitive. I still rate Simon Wiles and expect him to play in at least the Championship at some point. I remain convinced that Sullay Kaikai is a world class footballer just misapplied and everyone else is wrong. The data is also never definitive either and the sample size is small, I wrote a similar piece about Neil Critchley at around the same point in 2020 and the numbers did change and of course, the little imp twinkled all the way to Wembley and beyond, despite my initial scepticism. I think the numbers this time are worse though, Critchley's side was missing chances and we were doing some things well, if also some things very badly. The stats to date are really quite alarming. Stats are not football, but they can serve to challenge or support assumptions or appearances. It doesn't give me a lot of pleasure to say that sadly, it appears that my impressions of our football this season are not false and fundamentally, we've not been very good for most of the time we've been on the pitch. 

*long sigh* 

We need a massive improvement. 

Perhaps  when he's fit, Josh Bowler will just run round everyone every game and score twice a match and it will all be ok. 

Onward. 

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Writing about football is possibly a bit pointless in an era when there's the telly and youtube and videos all over the shop. It's not my living this and it's just something I do because I do so there's no problem with reading it and then getting on with your life - If you do want to chuck some money at the cause of some random fella writing shit no one ever asked him too, then Patreon. is a thing.

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⚡ Is he still electric? - the Mighty vs high voltage expectations ⚡

What AI? Painted this myself this morning. Honest.

After a summer of begging for on the piss Jerry to come back, he fucked off to the kit stealers near Bedford having mistaken their stupid orange copycat effort for our vastly different, infinitely superior and highly original Tangerine and we get forgotten Josh instead - which isn't bad really, because we've got Niall who can do something a bit like what Jerry did but we've got no one who has shown any real signs of doing what Josh did - so all in all, it all works out well in the end. 

Does it though?

We've got 5 wingers all of whom are either CJ or have some doubts about their fitness, whether through injuries or simply not playing football a lot recently. We've been pretty shite* all season. Surely just buying a couple of wingers (Scott Banks coming in as well) doesn't fix everything? 

(*a technical term used by top analysts and the type of people who produce scatter graphs with different coloured dots to represent passes of different types - it means 'when a football team don't look very much like scoring and concede quite a lot of stupid goals' or to put things in proper football hipster algorithmic language (BFC (-xg/+xga = shite)) 

The answer is a (admittedly hopeful) 'maybe' 

On the yes, everything is great, we're going to win the league now side of the argument, of the things we've really lacked (since all of our creativity and forward drive went to Charlton,) someone to run with the ball is the most obvious. As a side who play quite deep and don't really utilise (or possess) a really top class hold up player, it's quite important that we have a reliable way of getting out from our own half and towards the other team's goal in another way beyond smashing it long. We were pretty good at that last year. I'm afraid I have to say 'Apter and Carey' at some point in this article, because this year we've been terrible at it. The numbers don't lie. 

- CJ Hamilton (bless him) has managed a grand total of zero successful dribbles. That's literally none. Zero. He's a fucking winger. He hasn't gone past anyone and he barely ever shoots. This isn't great. 

- Emil Hansson is averaging less than half a dribble per game and half a dribble doesn't get you many goals. He also looked like he might have accepted a recreational cigarette from someone before his last game and suffered a panic attack. The fact one of our players then mysteriously vanished into the ether is neither here nor there in regards to that comment. Obviously. 

- Tom Bloxham average 0.8 dribbles per match which is the best of the wide men, but way below the output you'd expect for a top of the table winger in a side where the wingers are key creative players. To give weight to this, of the players who've played wide left or wide right this season, Bloxham is well below halfway in the table of 'dribbles per game' - and he's the best we've had on the pitch at it.  

Put simply, we're really not very good at carrying the ball in wide areas - which, for a side playing 442 is very problematic. We need quality on the flanks desperately - because, when almost everyone plays 3 in the middle, expecting a central midfielder in tangerine to run the game is fantasy, because that central midfielder is almost certainly facing a situation where they're outnumbered and having to work very hard to combat the extra man. You cede the middle of the pitch, but you gain in other places - but if the other places aren't doing the job, then 442 is a dreadful formation - because you're fundamentally exposed by the central overload. It's why people don't play it much.  

Josh Bowler is built to run with the ball. He does this pretty much as well as anyone I've ever seen play football. He does almost nothing else - but that's not the point. If you wanted any former player, certainly in the post boycott era, to address a lack of ability to carry the ball forward by himself, then Bowler would be the number one pick out of all of them. 

His numbers over his one and a half seasons with us bear this out. He ran with the ball very well, averaging around 2.5 successful dribbles per game and quite often, at the end of his run, he had a shot on goal (about 1.9 shots per game) - At the point he left us, if memory serves correctly, he was the most successful dribbler in the entire Championship - which isn't a stat to be sniffed at. 

To put this in context - if you combined the successful dribbling of ALL of our wingers this season (including the mysterious vanishing Malcolm, then, even if they were all playing at the same time, they'd average 1.9 successful dribbles to Bowlers 2.5 in his previous spell. Basically, Bowler dribbles better than all for of them added together. In terms of shots per game, Bowler's average from prior spells also beats all four of the players above by a factor of 0.2 - again, that's one man's output versus four player's output combined. Remember as well, Bowler's stats come from a higher league. 

The other thing we really miss, is the goals from wide (shots are good, but goals are better!) - this season, we've yet to score (or assist) a goal from a wide position - last season, we managed 16 goals and 3 assists between Apter and Carey (about a third of our goals directly from wide men involvement). - Bowler scored 11 goals in 49 starts in his previous two spell with us - (as well as 4 assists) and therefore we might expect that he will also address that lack of output from the wingers.

If we look at this compared to Apter and Carey, again, we have a positive stat: 

Apter + Carey 24/25
Mins on pitch = 5213
Direct Goal involvements 19
Goal involvement every 274 mins

Bowler (all Blackpool league games) 
Mins on pitch 4573
Direct Goal involvements 15
Goal involvement every 301 mins

Simply put, Bowler's individual direct impact on games during his prior spells with us wasn't far off the combined impact of our two most creative/attacking players last season. 

This is, of course, simplistic. It's blindingly obvious to state that if the 100% in form Josh Bowler, a player who earned a Premier League move (at least in name) returns and plays the same way he did to earn that move, then we'll be a better side. I might as well say things like 'We could do with a Charlie Adam' as if it's as simple as just going to Aldi and finding the shelf marked 'generational talents' and picking one up. 

Will he be the player he was?... is the key question. It's really quite difficult to judge this one. Obviously, the fact he's lacked consistent football at a decent level for a while might allow for a slow start - but will he get to where he was over time? 

His loan spells were largely forgettable and he's never hit the statistical heights of his previous time in Tangerine. I'll write of his loan spell with us (though it is included in the above data) because Mad Mick's mental management in trying to teach him to tackle and showing him 'tough love' by making him play central midfield was sheer insanity and did no one any favours, least of all Mick. 

He struggled to get on the pitch at Luton and PNE and whilst his spell at Cardiff was more successful, he dribbling and shooting stats in Wales are nowhere near the level he'd achieved for Blackpool (all the more remarkable considering  that for X number of games he was shackled by a dogmatic Yorkshireman as referenced above) 

In fact, the evidence is quite limited - Putting aside his time with Olympiakos (simply because the stats aren't in the database I'm using) Bowler has been at QPR, Everton, Hull, Cardiff, Luton and PNE (aside from the one true footballing force in the world.) He was only with us for about a season and a half and yet, more than half (to be exact, 51.6%) of his appearances in all senior domestic football are in tangerine. Even more starkly, 80% of his career assists and 61% of his goals were scored in that relatively short spell for us.  There is no doubt at all, he was a much better player for us than he has been anywhere else. 

What made his time with us so productive? Bowler thrived in a side, that played 442 - (though I'd contend that his absolute best football came in the 433 favoured by Michael Appleton, when he was virtually unplayable for about a month and therefore, his move away became to seem inevitable.) As we've already stated, 442 isn't very en vogue in modern football - so really, Bowler hasn't had that much chance to retread his previous Blackpool role of 'out and out winger running from deep' - because generally teams don't use that like we did with him. Wide players are often higher (i.e. wide front men) or if deeper are wing backs. Bowler did play well for us as the wide forward under the sad eyed gravedigger but he's absolutely not a wing back in any world. 

It's the earlier era, under the management of Neil Critchley, that offers the most potential insight into how things might go - because Championship era Critchley and Steve Bruce aren't so far removed in terms of their approach to games. No, really, go with me... I'm trying to fabricate optimism here. It's a leap of faith this!  Following Blackpool FC always has required and will almost certainly always will require a certain suspension of disbelief... 

Critchley favoured a 442 for much of that season. Bowler played pretty  damn well for most of it. So far, so good. What has to be said though, is that Critchley's 442 showed a real attention to detail. We didn't concede silly goals, we worked incredibly hard as a unit and everyone pitched in. Whilst it was definitely 442, it was a clever set up which maximised what we had at our disposal, (I've often cited that 'Grimshaw to Madine' was statistically the best relationship between keeper and forward in the league - because it exactly shows how, whilst much maligned for his second spell, Critchley was clever and very pragmatic in getting the most out of his resources.) This attention to detail, crucially, allowed a single real indulgence, one bit of luxury, one player who wasn't subsumed into the system to the same extent everyone else was, One player who didn't have a very tightly defined role based around 'winning battles and covering a lot of ground' - This piece of most un-Crtichley-esque frivolity went by the name of 'Josh Bowler' 

The question is, therefore, can we recreate something of this set up? Is Bruce able, like Critchley was, to get 10 players well drilled enough to give the 11th the freedom? The real impact of Bowler isn't simply measurable in his direct impact (assists and goals) - it's that the freedom afforded him would open space for others, for the likes of Yates, Anderson and so on. That Championship season, we were remarkably good at taking opportunities, a very structured team, who were able to pounce on the space created in a moment and punish oppositions. We did very well, relative to what we had and Bowler was a key part in making us unpredictable, giving us a cutting edge and oppositions something they simply couldn't ignore.  He lifted us from just being a hard working side to something that was always dangerous because he could run 40 yards, very quickly, from seemingly nowhere and turn defence to attack at any moment. 

One of my post game thoughts after the drab game that was Bolton, was that we had no one on the pitch who excited me. There was no sense that out of the grinder might emerge a flash of lightning, a will'o'the wisp, a rainbow, painting the grey football with light. We were so fucking functional it hurt. Perhaps Bowler is the sprinkle of flavour that the tasteless soup requires.

Bolton was a bit different to some of our other games, in that there was a bit of 'grind' about us and perhaps that is the platform we and Bowler need. There was a lot of 'grind' about Critchley's team and maybe, just maybe, Bowler will be the point of difference that lifts that grind from being 'uninspired plodding' to 'admirable hard graft' - lose or draw and 'grind' is dull. Win and fans will celebrate it, calling it '100% effort' and other such positive compliments. 

I'd argue that most of our players are water carrier types - and water carriers are perfectly valid - in fact, some of the best players in the world fall into this class - but water carriers need someone to carry water for and on the pitch recently, there's been no one (bar Ennis if we're fair). Bowler is a thirsty player for sure. Maybe Honeyman's lung busting exploits might not be to no avail with Josh around... Most players aren't match winners - their efforts may be consistent and honest - but it is judged by the result - and often the result depends on a player who isn't them and maybe isn't as consistent or admirably grafting - but who has the magic they don't. 

Let's stretch the metaphors further (this is a Josh Bowler piece after all, and the man inspires imagery!) - for all buildings, the foundations are ugly and functional. Functionality and beauty are not diametrically opposed - they're actually, in many contexts, complimentary, maybe even necessary partners. To get back to buildings, Bowler might just be the facade that gives things grace and style. Perhaps what we saw against Bolton was indeed just the concrete footings and pilings, not the actual structure in its totality. No one has ever written a book about 'great foundations in architectural history', but all the great monuments, churches, offices of state etc would collapse without them. The roof of the Sistine Chapel would just be long forgotten dust, without the solid foundations. Maybe Josh Bowler is our Michelangelo again and the rest of them are the stonemasons and labourers that no one remembers, but whose part in history was just as important as the artist in giving him the ceiling to paint in the first place. 

It would be so, so, so Blackpool to stumble, seemingly by accident and circumstance upon something that worked.

Less lyrically, (but perhaps more relevantly,) the recent Bruce inspired swansong to Carey's Blackpool career would suggest Bruce can do something. Whilst Carey isn't as talented a dribbler as Bowler and probably overall worked a lot harder in tracking back and supporting midfield than Bowler ever has (and can head a football) the two players are not a thousand miles apart in terms of what they did and what they weren't great at. Get ball, go forward, have shot. If Bruce could see that Carey (previously used as a kind of safety first midfielder) needed licence to do this to release his potential, then Bowler should strike him as a ridiculously obvious case for freedom.

Having watched a little bit of Bowler at other clubs, it would seem to me, that in the main, they didn't really know what to do with him. They hoped they'd signed a 'regulation' winger who would do all the things you'd expect of a modern winger but as we know, he does pretty much none of those things other than dribble and shoot very well. It's a bit like the well-worn observation that ,yes, Madine couldn't run but he was better at holding it up and winning the ball than just about anyone in the country (literally) - Bowler is a player whose qualities are such that his deficits are more than made up for but you only get his qualities if you actively plan to give him the platform to show them. 

I recall a conversation with a PNE fan of my acquaintance in which I said "he'll be shit for you unless you build the whole set up around allowing him to dribble without consequence, in which case, he'll be brilliant" - they didn't build around him and he was, indeed, highly forgettable (something which is convenient as we obviously want to forget he went there too) 

The conclusion we must come to is therefore - if Bruce gives him the freedom, if Banks can play a more disciplined role on the left (ala Keshi Anderson's role, which combined hard work and flair) and if the side can be drilled to drop in and cover for Bowler as he wanders and runs into the dead ends he inevitably will do and if Danny Imray can do the work of two players at full back then actually, this could really address our shortcomings. 

Our problems have been many, but they've been compounded by an inability to 'get out' - we've really failed to put teams on the back foot for any length of time because we can't get at them - to return to the obvious point, a side playing 442 with crap wingers will really, really struggle to put any pressure on the opposition and therefore, the opposition will be emboldened to put pressure on them. Whilst, yes, we've conceded some poor goals and individual players have made mistakes, the simple fact is, if you attack more, there's less pressure on the defence and less potential for those mistakes. 

Will it work? Fuck knows. I'm a shit blogger, not a soothsayer. Does him being here give us reason for optimism? Of course it does. He was one of the best attacking talents I've ever seen in tangerine and had he got a slightly different move to somewhere that used him properly as opposed to loaning him out and freezing him out, then the chances of him turning up back here, especially in League One would have been precisely zero. There's an alternative history where Bowler goes to, say, Sheffield United and then on to say, Bournemouth and thrives. He's really fucking good at what he's good at. He was horrendously advised (on a purely footballing level) about where to take that talent next. 

It is to be hoped that his career misfortune is to turn out to be our gain. It is to be hoped for his and for our sake that he breathes in the sea air and is inspired by the salty tang of the Irish Sea,.. that a sense memory is awakened in him and he's to be found exploding from a standing start, leaving players trailing, left and a right foot stepover-ing, vaulting over lunging tackles and hitting shots with a 230 volt mains current strength electric shock charged power past prone, despairing keepers... maybe, just for once, we get to see a player take us with him as they reach their potential, instead of watching them slip away somewhere else and leave us behind stuck with the rest of them who, admirable as they are, ain't the ones who steal your heart and leave you breathless...

That would be fucking lovely. It would be something nice in a world of too much shit. 

I want this to work with every fibre of my being. I'd be prepared to even say a little prayer to the great void of nothingness in return for some fucking romance and joy and the rebirth of a player who can bring those painfully absent qualities in absolute barrow loads.

I don't really believe in anything.

I do believe in tangerine.

Therefore, if god exists, god is tangerine. 

Dear whatever higher power. Let Josh be good, not fat, slow and shit. Amen. 

Onward. 

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