I'm not a big fan of declaring games as 'must win' but all week, this game has lurked in my head as exactly that. We've spent all season waiting for the turnaround that has never materialised and now, here we are, facing another side in a similar boat to us, staring down the barrel of the dreaded run in, having abandoned all hope of anything beyond survival. Just to cheer you all up - the best case now is abject mediocrity. 17th looks appealing... The fear is obviously, something much worse, a relegation when you've recruited a team for promotion. What has happened has us here, but today, we need to play like we're starting afresh - How you start the final stretch doesn't dictate whether you make it over the line but it certainly has an impact.
Oh, for confidence and belief. Oh for a side we can love and celebrate. Oh for a team with credit in the bank whose mistakes we can balance against their successes and forgive. This is tension. This is a time when songs, sung in full voice still feel hollow as we're screaming with desperation, not chanting in celebration. We're trying to evoke something we've not seen, not making noise to the tempo of the game.
It feels like a kind of madness to think that pretty much 7 years ago we turned up here, to watch a side unfamiliar to many and thrown together with the backdrop of empty stands and toxic turmoil. A team managed by someone who had never before (and never since) managed a football league team and that side was considerably better off than this one.
We've come a long way since and yet, we're further back than where we started. That's football I suppose. Always kicking sand in your face but still, we return for more.
We're not drifting though. Oh no. Definitely not. No drifting here. Just a steady, forward thinking football club with 'progress' running through everyone's body like the lettering in the proverbial stick of rock...
I've found myself in uncharacteristic despair. You can probably tell. I'm not sure what we should do. Whichever way you put this lot together, disaster never seems far away. The belief that we just need something to drop and then things click into place has ebbed away and now it's about doing basics, scrapping, competing, struggling, not giving in. A season that started with promises of 'players that'll get you off your seat' is now looking to have achieved just that, in so much as, a proportion of fans aren't in their seats but doing something else with their lives... Lets just hope that, however it comes, we find ourselves 3 points richer than we started the game. That's all that matters right now.
It's been a long time since Bloomfield Road has felt remotely like it did that day almost 7 years ago. We've had precious little to cheer in a while. The team selection doesn't actually scream 'attack, attack.... attack,attack,attack' - It's as if Evo has decided he can't trust the footballers and so has picked all the runners instead.
Sexy football indeed. Times are hard. Needs must.
Lets put aside all the griping and just do what we're actually all here for.
C'MON YOU POOOOOOOOL!
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I'm just about to say 'Why is Brown on free kicks?' - We'd made nothing of set pieces taken by our 1980s tribute midfielder last week and he doesn't seem the most obvious candidate to be our lower league Beckham. I'm glad I haven't said it out loud by the time he's taken it, as he provides a lovely ball, curling and dropping exactly into the path of Ollie Casey's forehead, which propels it, with a deeply satisfying certainty beyond the keeper and into the net. It's the kind of goal we concede. Simple and deeply frustrating to let in - but for once, we're on the other side of that and it feels magnificent. The funny thing is, when you concede these goals, they feel like defensive failures, capitulations by the gutless players who have failed in preventing the most obvious of outcomes - but when you score them, it's all about the charging run, the timing of the leap and the quality of the ball. I love old fashioned goals and that was a perfect example. Casey loves it, we love it and the Pool are staying up. These are there for the taking... Top half by May anyone? C'MON POOL!
I might have got a bit carried away there for a moment, though, for a good while it does appear that Wigan are there for the taking. They're horrible for the first half an hour or so and we create a lot of pressure. We don't create many chances but we have a lot of possession in 'good areas' ((c) N Critchley (2023-24)) - we keep them pinned back and we look hungry for the fight. Brown is having a good game, his tackling is more certain and solid. Initially the combined energy of the midfield 3 is helpful to us, we play with a kind of manic approach and whilst little of quality emerges from this, it is very disruptive to Wigan.
Bloxham has a chance to fiddle the ball into space in the box, he does the first part well, but the shot is well wide. The same player has a chance to run onto a through ball and he falls between chasing it down and trying to win a penalty and does neither very well. Fletcher has a couple of moments, a similar doomed chase where cynically, I think he might have been better running across the defender and falling over and one unfortunate moment where, unexpectedly, the ball breaks for him in a great position but he's on his heels and his touch is terrible and the brief moment of excitement disappears in an instant.
The crowd is positive. We are fighting. This isn't great football, this isn't anything other than a lower league relegation scrap - but we knew that was what were coming to see and the players on the pitch are clearly doing their best to outscrap Wigan and so far, they've done it reasonably well.
We're onto the linesman for an awful call. We're onto the ref - this weeks edition has the air of a grammar school prefect who has outgrown his uniform and is drunk on the power of his little enamel prefect badge. He stalks about noting things in his little special book with a strange mix of self satisfaction and confusion. The game is niggly and there's lots of falling over and he gives some very odd decisions. Refs are refs are refs and both sets of fans and both managers (both yellow carded) are incensed by him.
So far so good then? The exercise in pragmatic selection and pragmatic football (pass, pass... lump) is paying off? We've not been very aesthetic, but Wigan haven't had anything at all...
Don't count your chickens. This is Blackpool.
Wigan surge through, breaking our lines for the first time, BPF is initially effective, forcing their lad wide, but then, they retain the ball, calmly move it a couple of times, first back, then square, there's no challenge and now it's a chance to shoot - the shot isn't all that, it's on target yes, but instinctively it feels manageable, more central than in the corner, but it squirms past BPF's arm and thumps into the goal, a stomach punch to the tangerine cause and one that felt preventable.
To say we don't cope well with adversity as a team is stating the obvious. What defines this season more than anything, isn't so much the first goal we concede - but how we react to it. Today is another one of those games. The players look bereft. It's like the opposition scoring is the worst possible thing that can happen. If I was in charge of them, I'd lock them in a room for 2 days with "Even the best teams concede goals, stop being a bunch of melts and fucking react to it better or get a job in ALDI or washing cars or mining for phosphate, or whatever else it is, just basically anything where it isn't a basic inevitability that you have to concede goals as part of your working day" playing over and over again for the entire 48 hours...
I don't know if Evo has tried this yet, but, true to form and to use a technical term, we 'go to shit' once again and everything suddenly looks rushed and panicky - there's been very few occasions this season where we've brushed off a set back as 'something that happens' and got straight back into the game. Happily, Wigan aren't very good so there's no terminal harm caused despite our best efforts to the contrary...
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Overall, we've done ok (ish), the effort has been there - The problem is - we've had a long spell with the better of the play and a short spell with Wigan on top and we're drawing because we couldn't make much of being on top. The team aren't lacking in effort, but it's glaringly obvious we're lacking in the quality to calm the game and thread a pass or the bit of magic to beat a man or the movement of a proper goal poacher to give the options to the players in the 'good areas'
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We're off again and Wigan pick up still on their upturn from the end of the previous half. They're hitting our right flank and getting some joy. Firstly Walters is cut out the game, turned round like discraded paper cup in on an airport runway being blown by the displaced air of a fighter ject by a ball and a run behind him... they're in, but happily their lad has a 'CJ Hamilton' moment and completely fails to control the ball. That's one we've got away with.
Then, a similar ball into the right back position and Brown and Horsfall both hesitate, expecting the other to chase it. It's like watching two cars stall on the starting grid as they lurch uncertainly and the Wigan lad races in, cuts inside and places a shot past the keeper. Luck is on our side as it cracks the inside of the post and then the bounce is unexpectedly kind, sending the ball, not back over the line, but rolling kindly into the arms of BPF.
I start to watch the subs. It's really evident we need *something* more. We are making very, very little and the stretching and sprinting on the touchline offers more promise than the clumsy football on offer on the pitch.
One moment seems to sum us up. Fletcher has a quiet game, but he is a good player. I'm watching the front two, whose 'needs must' partnership of previous months seems to be extended long past the point of need. Fletcher comes short, signals to Ihiekwe to roll it too his feet. He does, Fletcher, comes to the ball, then peels away, a clever dummy that sells his man totally. It's pointless though because Bloxham hasn't read it and the ball rolls through harmlessly. The little bits of occasional skill we produce aren't leading to anything because the team don't seem to be on a wavelength - that's been notable all year, it's been notable longer perhaps, but last year, with the likes of Apter and some ginger kid I've forgotten all about, we had individuals who could make things happen.
Surely we have those on the bench... Randall, Bowler, Clarkson. There's a fucking good set of footballers right there. They can do mad stuff like have a shot and pass to someone else. Niall Ennis! He's an actual proper striker. He scores goals and everything!
Still we wait. Still the the game mostly resembles a low quality fight between two blokes who've had too many jagerbombs and both been dumped by their girlfriends that night, and are taking out their mute frustration and fears on each other but really, they're both too pissed to do any damage to each other. You feel they're likely to stumble into a piece of street furniture and hurt themselves as they are to actually land an effective punch.
Finally we get Ennis. Why he's not starting every week by now when he's been back for well over a month is a mystery. I can only guess there's more to his fitness than meets the eye. The game goes on a bit longer in the same manner. The ref struts around doing inexplicable shit. Passes go astray. Wigan escape down our right again, but fortunately another of their lads has the touch of a ping pong ball on concrete and we escape yet again.
We have a couple of shots but they're barely worth mentioning. We win a few free kicks and the Horse gamely runs about looking like he's got more idea than anyone else in the box, but nothing really comes of them. The Horse gets beaten for pace at the back and Casey (who has a really, really good game today, his best for ages) makes a tremendous block to save his partner. The Horse makes another run in the box and seems to get wrestled to the ground. The ref gives Wigan a free kick because he's a fucking idiot whose legs and arms are too long for his kit.
All the while, the tension is palpable. I'm looking at the line every 20 seconds. The players on it have done so many shuttle runs they're probably ready for a rest now. It would be vey on brand Blackpool FC 2526 for our players to injure themselves by warming up for too long. Evatt seems caught in indecision. It's obvious that to win the game we need to risk losing it. That's always true. It's the nature of football that to attack, you have to sacrifice defence a bit. Anderson was helpful first half when his manic energy was disruptive but by now, it's both counter productive and less manic. Honeyman is a similar tale - his distribution has become genuinely awful, he passes it out of play several times, he doesn't look to have the legs left when he collects in a rare moment of opportunity all he can do is check back and play it square - which defeats the point of having him in the advanced role. The clock ticks on. Evatt strolls back and forward. He stands on the touchline. He takes his jacket off. He puts his hands behind his back. He moves them forward, he locks his fingers together. He walks towards the dugout as if to speak to Crainey and then he turns away again.
I kind of sympathise with his double bind, but c'mon, we can also lose games trying not to lose them... Why is this season defined by fear?
Time ticks on and on and on and still we wait. Finally, Bowler and Randall are readied. This is one of the most exciting players I've seen in the last decade and one of the best players I've seen play against us in League 1 They've got an entire minute or so, plus injury time to impact the game.
Not surprisingly, they don't.
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Afterwards, it's still a strange feeling. It's a sign of how poor we've been to say 'there's something to be taken from the fact we scrapped' - it's not a lot, but to have folded against this opposition would, I think have been potentially terminal to our self belief.
That said, the straws I've clutched are flimsy ones. We didn't take 3 points in a game where the opposition were poor. We didn't even look to try. After the game Evatt says, essentially 'I didn't want to risk it' - I value the fact he's honest about it, even if I disagree. I've waxed lyrical about Josh Bowler here plenty of times before - I would find a way to play him more often than not, there's no question in my mind about that - but I can respect if Evatt doesn't see him the same way - what I find more strange is, knowing where we are and how we've been all season, that we've signed players in January we don't feel like we can use. Joel Randall is a player Evatt's signed twice and Leighton Clarkson is our 'statement' from January - yet, they sit on the bench in a 'must win' game.
The point is this - we're now trying to reinvent ourselves as a pragmatic set of scrappers who can reduce a game to a wrestling match. I do grudgingly get why a manager might do that - but the squad isn't designed for this, any more than it's designed for anything else. There are only so many players who can effectively execute that style and whilst we did it reasonably well for 30 minutes and probably, we matched Wigan for effort and niggly stuff and we ran about a lot, but like everything else we've seen this season, as soon as one player tires or has a knock, we're then throwing in ill suited players to that style or carrying bodies who aren't at 100%.
Time will tell if the pragmatic 'stopping the rot' decision was the right one. In a world of tangerine tinted sunlight, we go to Wimbledon and we combine today's effort with a bit of the quality we didn't see today and we win the game and take a new found confidence as a group into the remainder of the matches.
All hail Alpha Critch and his psychological masterclass.
This season though, has had a way of smashing any optimism in the face. Just as my hopes get up, they belly flop into the ground in an undignified and painful manner. I'm also seeing a world where, we go, try to do the same thing and we're fatigued after 20 minutes and Wimbledon 2 up by halftime. If that happens and we don't change shape and stick the Horse up front, I'm done.
We had to win. We didn't lose. We're still alive, we've still got it all to play for. The issues of one game pale into significance in comparison to the issues over time. We need to get to the end of this season and wipe the slate clean and build something properly, something actually thought through, something with a bit of depth and some clarity to what it actually is.
We just need to get there first.
Onward
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