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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