EURO FEVER DAY 3 (EDGY ENGLAND)

Day 3:

There is finally some sunshine in England. I go for a walk as who knows when we'll see some more.

The Dutch play out a tough game with Poland and win it when they bring on the big man, the much maligned Weghorst. United finished third when they had the big lad, they finished nowhere without him. Big lads win games. Facts lads. Facts. The pundits chat about whether defenders can handle big lads these days and conclude they can't. Get on the Gaz-phone Gareth and get Madine on that bench England.

I don't watch much of the above, what with being outside. I do watch all of Denmark and Slovenia. First half Eriksen has me purring, not just for the glorious catharsis of his brilliantly taken goal (lets not mince words, he LITERALLY DIED for a bit last time round) but just about everything he does drips with class, every corner swinging dangerously, every pass weighted beautifully.

Slovenia offer the odd moment first half but play really well second half and score just after missing a great chance and hitting the post. It's deserved. Denmark look gutted.

Off the pitch I think about the following: Is an advert where the voiceover is 'It's squeeky cheese time' the most desperate link to football ever? Why are Lidl such a big thing in this tournament? Lidl is a shit Aldi (with admittedly better fresh baked goods) and thus they seem a bit incongruous when laid against all the other big names sponsoring the tournament. In the crowd, bouncing seems to be very 'in' this tournament. The Dutch were very bouncy in the little I saw and both the Danes and the Slovenes (?) were jumping up and down, whipped up by them weird blokes with a megaphone who don't watch the game.

The BBC kick off with a montage that is as brilliantly done as it is depressing. Lineker is wearing a t-shirt that is weirdly also a jumper. Rio looks a little sleep deprived and forgets the names of people. Micha Richard's hair is absolutely amazing and Cesc just sits there looking deeply classy which, obviously, he is, because he's from abroad. Joe Hart appears with strange wraps around one of his arms. It is inexplicable.

England are slick and quick and just at the point when you wonder if all this moving the ball is going to lead somewhere, Saka puts in a deflected cross and Bellingham thunders in and connects gorgeously with it. A simple but lovely goal.

It's all England until Stones and Walker get mixed up, pass it out of play and from the Serbia throw, England win it back, but Alexander-Arnold gifts it on a plate for Mitrovic to whistle it past the post. C'mon. Don't do stupid things. We've been good, but there's a little spell where Serbia look more in the game until a break and a terrific run from Walker that sees him slide it agonisingly across the face. England do that again, then have a really shaky moment from a cross into the box where Stones ends up frozen and awkward and the half is up.

The Serbian manager puts me in mind of someone who would be in a children's story about a man who owns a haunted barrel organ. He has a mischievous air about him, a little like Ancelotti. He gets a better tune out of his team at the start of the second half. They pin England in, they get in behind Stones, they force more mistakes from England.

15 minutes pass without a convincing England move. 15 becomes 20 and Serbia press. England are reduced to smacking the ball away to no one. Trent goes off. Gallagher comes on. England really need to carry the ball and scrap. Gallagher might be the box to box player to get us out. Pickford chucks in a random punch for no reason just to add a bit more sense of edginess to what is feeling increasingly nervy.

Bowen replaces Saka and immediately glides past his man with a little shimmy, floats a glorious ball in, Kane meets it with all the force of a steam hammer and the ball looks destined for the goal until the Serbian keeper throws up his hands and diverts the ball onto the bar.

It's a temporary respite. Pickford has to twist in the air and tip a long distance effort over the bar. From the resulting corner, Kane has to head an equally dangerous looking effort away from almost under the bar. There's a couple of really good crosses scrambled away. There's a long distance effort. There's a brilliant bit of play that gets them all the way from being penned in in the corner to bearing down on England's goal in about three passes.

Finally, there's a booming clearance from Pickford, his anger rising and showing in the wind up, kick and leap and then, the final whistle...

All a bit Blackpool. A good half, then the other team changed it up and everything looked sloppy and confused. It's a win though.

Onward! 

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EURO FEVER DAY 2 (RAIN AND SPAIN)

Day 2: Here in England it's been a summery 11 degrees, replete with glorious cold and torrential rain and I want to put the fire on. Meanwhile in Deutschland there's been plenty of red hot soccer action. After the spectacular failure of both my preview piece and day 1 summary, here's day 2 in all it's glory*

*I may** have missed out some of the glory.
**I have missed out some of the glory***
*** Reason for missing glory are outlined in the informative diagram below

I can't take Switzerland seriously even though they've been quite good for a while. It's Switzerland. They're just not 'footbally'. I once stopped at a motorway services in Switzerland so I therefore picture the entire country as being like an expensive motorway services with mountains. Kind of like Tebay.

Hungary by contrast are very 'footbally' and have a serious looking manager. The Swiss are managed by a fella whose square glasses and long hair make him look like a furniture designer.

The game is decent. The Swiss are really good first half. Xhaka is outstanding .Two of their players score their first goals and it's a reminder of how previously unheralded players can light up a tournament ala Toto Schillachi in Italia 90 and some other players I've forgotten. The Magyars roar back into the game second half pulling back a goal with a lovely header. The best bit for me is that both teams bring on big lads. The Hungarian big lad is a terrific addition - the fact he looks more like he should be wearing dungarees and driving a flat bed truck full of straw means he's definitely my favourite player so far. The Swiss big lad scores, which is nice cos he's been injured for ages.

There's two things you notice watching this. 1 - Hungary are very good. 2. It's striking how unusual it is to see keepers immediately shelling it as long as they can when the ball comes to them - even though that was quite normal up till not that long ago. 

For Spain and Croatia the underwhelming b team pundits are shipped out, (though I do quite like Karen Carney's disapproving vibe of someone recounting a particularly shit marriage in post divorce drinking session with friends when describing poor play.) It's all Wrighty, Keano and G-Nev for this one. Keane can't stop saying "warriors" over and over. G-Nev speaks with the authority of a man who thinks he's an authority. Wrighty's glasses don't so much suggest furniture designer as your Nan at the bingo. Combined with an arty take on a flowery shirt, the man is the very definition of style.

On the pitch, the score is one sided but the game isn't. Croatia make a bunch of chances and don't score them and even when they do, they get ruled it out. Spain make a similar amount of chances but do score. It's a back and forth game but only one way in terms of the result. Spain are playing a 16 year old which is mental and he's pretty good. It's a wild idea and I don't want to tell our manager what to do but.... Maybe we could risk the 21 year old Rob Apter in the odd league one game?

Scots could probably use him as well tbf

I know it's trendy to hate on the USAVARLADY but she's definitely better than the ex refs they've had doing a similar thing (whether or not she said 'outside penalty') because she is quite concise and decisive. Peter Walton is neither. I do, however, think the fact TV now employ a specific analyst for VAR might be an indication that it's an overcomplicating element in a game whose simplicity is the key point in its global appeal.

Italy and Albania is ruined by me having to snatch glances at it on my silent phone. I see Albania go ahead and I see Donnarumma make a brilliant save at the end but in between I don't see very much of the game at all. On that evidence, it appears as if Albania have dominated from start to finish but the little bits of punditry I manage to hear by sneaking away from what I was engaged with suggest the Italians had played well. This is precisely the kind of top line, top level, exclusive insight you read this blog for. Who needs the MSM? 

Today's menu includes more football and that includes some country called 'England' - you may have heard of it. It's quite rainy. 

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Alternatively 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 and frankly, the better choice. 

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EURO FEVER (DAY 1 - Scotland's shame)

I don't know if I can do one of these every day, but I'll have a go for the sake of it. The content will not have any great value. It's an exercise in seeing if I can lower the bar still further.

The tactical diagram from the previous blog: It appears Steve Clarke hadn't read this closely enough. Be warned other nations. Disregard MCLF's tactical insight at your peril. 

Day 1: Everything went as expected. Scotland were spectacularly bad. Their game plan resembled a non-league side playing a Champions League winner but they'd forgotten that if you need to go back to front directly then you need to kick the ball hard enough to get it up front and to have a big lad up that there to receive it. 

 
We opened the tournament with an inexplicable euro dance where people looked frighteningly happy and energetic and jumped about in what appeared to be costumes designed according the AI prompt "what happens when you mash up a cycling jersey, jockeys silks and a hockey kit?"

If you were wondering, this is the answer to the question...

On the telly Ally McCoist ended up sad which was a shame but he kept getting hugs from his co-host so that was ok. Roy Keane was high pitched and incredulous. How he remains surprised that most footballers aren't as good as the best ones week after week is amazing. Graeme Souness was both simmering and confused by life in equal measure. Ian Wright remains supremely lovable for his intense commitment to the moment. Keane's apathetic shrug when asked if was jealous of the gongs awarded to various pundits stole the show though. Keane's quality is that for all he is pastiche of himself, underneath, there's a really unspun and genuine quality to him.

On the pitch, the Germans pressed, passed and moved with sexy young players. They then, as if a nation showing their military might in a parade of weapons might tag on a couple of unconventional warheads to the end of the parade, brought some really good old players on and a really good big lad too. It was almost as if to say "we (ve) can do it like this (zis)... or we (ve) can do it like that... (zat)"  

Nagelsman has the air of an up and coming executive type at a company that has a big glass office in London. You can imagine him sweeping in and saying things like "focus on growth delivery strategy" and leaving his expensive car key somewhere you can see it, just so you know he's doing very fucking well thankyou very much and he'll crush you if you get in his way. 

Steve Clarke, it's fair to say doesn't have that vibe. He's more 'man who has worked for Ayrshire council forever but is coming toward retirement and people aren't so sure what to get him for a gift because he's not really said much about himself in the last 40 years'

Ayrshire Council building where people are wondering if Steve once mentioned if he had a caravan or not.

Sam Matterface was the lowlight of the occasion. It's easy to pile on famous commentators and complain about them but this fella is something else. He sounds like the result of what would happen if you plugged a Sainsbury's in a pre-recorded in-store advert voiceover to a search engine primed with "interesting facts about [insert team name/location of the game]" and failed to filter any of the results. He's Motson, but with none of the charm. There's absolutely nothing there. He make Guy Mowbray seem like a deep, insightful sage and master of the art of oratory. 

"Ally did you know that's only the sixth time that Scotland have taken a goal kick from the right side of the six yard box since last October"

"Aye Sam, but they've only played twice"

"Hey shoppers, check out the frozen aisle for great summer discounts! - Quality and great prices - only at Sainsbury's " 

"Sam, I' think yer a wee bit broken agin" 

In an odd way, I think this result might do Scotland some good. Steve Clarke is a good manager but he's sometimes caught between an orthodoxy and intent. Scotland are going to have to do something different.

Today? More football!!! Tomorrow - maybe another shit blog though I've got shit to do so maybe not. Who knows. 

Don't get that kind of sign off in the Athletic do you? 

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Alternatively 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 and frankly, the better choice. 

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EURO FEVER!: A terrible preview

At this time in the football calendar, the world is full of 'content creators' trying to ride the gravy train by getting on board the Euro Fever express (all the way to Engagement Central via Smash that Like Button and Subscribe Parkway.) Their pathetic attempts to harness the occasion is only matched by their audiences acceptance of the bland and ill informed drivel they churn out.

As someone whose knowledge of top level football these days extends to watching Match of the Day once every six months and accidentally seeing a goal now and again on Twitter or in the pub, it would be absurd of me to attempt to pose as some kind of authority on the Euros. What kind of twat would not know anything about the thing they were writing about and yet, write about it anyway?

Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you the official MCLF Euros preview blog.

As your guide to the forthcoming tournament, I'm going to share a range of things to look out for. Think of this as a metaphorical bingo card to carry with you.

1) There will be a player that runs a bit weirdly so instinctively you'll think he's shite but will turn out to be absolutely fucking brilliant. He won't be English.

2) There also will be a different player who is ridiculously slow but who is also absolutely brilliant. He also won't be English. I'll really envy the nation (probably Italy or Croatia) who have this player and will, at any given moment launch into a monologue about 'what this shows is how the English game, as much as it's evolved is still essentially in thrall to an idea of physical attributes being superior to technical skills and (insert name of player who is slow as fuck but incredible) shows how that just isn't true. If he was English he wouldn't get a game for us in a million years but look at how good he is'

The person listening won't give a fuck and will say 'mmm' in reply if I'm lucky.

3) Someone (an East European nation or Scotland - which is essentially the same thing) will have picked a really massive lad up front in the hope that works. It will work once in the group stages but never again. On the same note, there'll be a point where, no matter what sort of football hipster you might be you'll wish England had picked Andy Carroll just for that last 10 minutes as they bring on ever more identikit exciting attacking midfielders but there's no one to hold the bloody ball up for them. Get Madine on!

High quality graphics (practically art) depicting complex tactical plans are sometimes a feature of the MCLF blog experience

4) People pretending they know all about every league in Europe cos they've sneakily looked up the figures as they haven't actually watched any of it but behave as if they have will be annoying as fuck on Twitter and that.

"Carlos deMaris, is the MASTER of the half press and his rotating demi 10 role was the KEY this season for Real Betis"

5) Jordan Pickford will take most of my attention when England play because without Grealish he's the most watchable player. His restless manic battle with his own concentration and wholehearted delight when he gets to do *anything at all* is a delight of the modern age. His goal kicking is high art.

6) At some point there'll be a highlights reel and Dele Alli will be on it and you'll think 'there's a shame - wonder where he is now?"

7) I'll tell anyone willing to listen "Adam Wharton? Yeah, I was actually at his debut..." as if that gives me some kind of insight into his career way above people who've actually watched him play loads but only on the telly.

Having checked what I thought about his debut, it turns out I didn't think about him at all and the only thought I offered on t'Rovers was

Their manager looks like a boring golf club pro. He looks like the kind of man who says 'I love camping!' but owns a camper van not a tent and has all his things ironed and laid out when he goes what he calls 'camping' but is really 'driving a big luxury van house to a field'. He definitely has a gas barbecue that's really clean.

Which is probably a fairly useful guide to the standard of informed content you can expect from this blog regarding the Euros. 

8) Scotland will be awful, a bit better and then actually quite good when it's too late. Either that or they'll be great in the games they can't win and rubbish in the games they can. I will insist that Lawrence Shankland is pure world class despite him not actually being so.

9) Slavan Bilic will be the best pundit and if he's not there I might watch YouTube clips of him being and odd mixture of really intense and strangely dismissive during half time and that will mean he'll still be the best pundit in my head.

10) The whole thing will take what is awful about large scale international tournaments (the global brands covering absolutely everything with logos, the weird atmosphere that comes from stands full of executives and corporate friends of UEFA, the relentless management of every second of build up and post match via music and so on and so on) to a new level

11) You'll want to hate it, but despite it being objectively awful and leaving you yearning for the good old days of shit grounds, a riot and Barry Davies, you'll fall in love with it anyway, because it's football and football is tremendous and no matter what they do around the edges, international football retains something kind of pure about it because you can't buy the other teams best players and that, in an age where in domestic football, a player like Grealish can be bought by a state to gift to their insane Spanish football scientist purely for him to perform bizarre experiments on, is something kind of beautiful. You have to use what you have. There is no way to buy anyone. The end.

The good old days. Washed out colours. No co commentary. Civil war in the UK, countries that don't exist any more. Nigel Worthington. 

12) There'll be a sense that *something is happening that isn't a war, a pandemic, a recession, the slow death of democracy or owt like that* - that will be great because it'll be right there and everywhere and almost everyone will be part of it and even if, like me, you don't actually have a clue, you'll be confidently saying things like 'yes, but that's Mainoo's game and we should exploit that not restrict it' or 'you've got to balance the fact Stones won't just sit in don't you?'

13) At some point, you'll realise you are totally immersed in it and it will feel like it will never end. Just as you notice that, you'll realise there's only a few group games to go and then, it will all suddenly seem to speed up, there'll be less and less and less, like a piece of paper being folded over and over and over, getting smaller and smaller and smaller and then... It'll be gone and you'll feel empty. England almost certainly won't have won. The clock will have ticked over and when the final final whistle blows another two years will have passed in the time it takes for that shrill blast to sound. 

We mark our lives by these things. We work out what year it was by thinking about what happened that summer. Did Gazza cry? Was it when Van Basten swiveled on that volley? Were the Soviet Union in it or was it Russia? Did we fuck up spectacularly against Iceland? Was it the USA? Was it the summer that Tricky Trev got picked by accident and was actually really good? Did Rooney twat one? Was it pre/post Sven? Did we like or loathe Maguire at that point? What pub were you in? Did you watch it on your phone? Who did you hug in the joyful chaos that came before the perennial disappointment? 

Odd years are marked by whether they came before or after even ones.

The first Euros I can remember was Jack Charlton and Ireland. England, failing in grinding it out and falling way short. Ruud Gullit and the Dutch being way better than everyone else. There were only 8 teams and yet, sitting as it does in my childhood memory, it seemed to be impossibly rich and to have lasted for months.

Now I am older, the tournament has about 800 teams and will last 4 times as long, the standard of football will be palpably better in almost every way, the coverage infinitely deeper and the clarity of the TV picture spectacularly sharper.

Somehow, the former will always seem more deep than the latter. Nothing will ever be as visceral as the the things in the past that shaped what we became.

I don't want to miss a kick though. I will, because I'm a person with a job who has to do things other than watch football sometimes.

I resent that hugely. I want to sit and watch the meaningless end of group games between minor European nations, one of whom has a player who used to play for Derby and the other, a bloke who is in the reserves at Bournemouth. I want to have nothing in my life other than this. The childhood freedom of nothing to do other than occasionally tidy your room and scribble the scores on a wall chart. I want to develop strong opinions on Albania or to be right there when Serbia make that substitute and things turn in the way I was when I was 10. I want to badly spell the names of exotic goalscorers in felt tip on shiny paper. Fuck, I want to go to the field and twat a ball against the wall and see myself in my minds eye playing the game I've just watched. Time is cruel. Growing up is overrated. 

I could be cynical. I could write reams about UEFA and corruption and the cold dead hand of television, of global capital and free market ideals strangling the life out of the game. I could do that in a heartbeat and it would probably be better informed and more worthy than this shite I'm churning out right now but underneath all the sideshow hoopla, there is football. 

For all that the fuss around the tournament will inevitably resemble one of those mad Amazon packages where you order a thing that arrives in a box 10 times it's size that contains enough bubble wrap to fill a medium sized sea with micro plastics, ultimately, in the midst of it, at the heart of the thing, at the epicentre of our days and our lives, there will be football.

Ladies and gentlemen. I give you... 'AI' 

I love football. We all do. It's the best game anyone has ever come up with.

Love is all there is. Love and death. So, before we die, let us love. Football is fucking class. Everything else is meaningless distraction.

Onward!

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You can follow MCLF on facebook or Twitter or use Follow.it to get posts sent to your email 

MCLF has a Patreon programme where you can make the frankly stupid decision to pay some money to get absolutely no bonus content at all (euros accepted).

Alternatively 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 and frankly, the better choice. 

  Home-Start Blackpool Food Bank

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The price isn't right

There's probably enough words on this topic in the ether but what's the harm in a few more? So, here goes... 

The club recently released season ticket and match day pricing. The reaction was clear. Fan groups, podcasts, message board posters, local radio coverage and individuals on social media expressed a clear sense that the structure wasn't right. There was a strong concern for how this would impact on particular groups. Those groups - families, young people and children are the groups which are essential for the long term stability of the club. 

Since then, we've seen two interviews with the CEO where it appears clear that the concerns of the supporters are not to be listened to. To my mind, nothing I've seen gives me confidence that the idea of growth over time and building the fan base to support long term sustainability is the continuing goal of the club.

If those are not the goals, then I'd like to know what the goals are - because in order to be more than we are we need to achieve the above. If the club is to become sustainable at this level or higher, then we need more people coming through the gates. If the club is to even maintain it's current financial performance then we need to ensure that we keep generating new fans as time has a nasty habit of ensuring no supporter stays in their seat forever. 

The key question is: does charging more for young people to attend football matches help us achieve these goals? According to the CEO himself, the 'young people and children' impacted by the price rises and band changes are a very small part of the total support. That begs an obvious question - why bother increasing their prices? Lets say there's 500 kids now paying £50 more - that's £25,000. That's really not a lot of money at all. That's essentially the cost for a whole lot of very bad PR. 

The knock on issue is that small immediate gain (based on a flawed assumption that all the parents renew all the current kids season tickets at higher cost) becomes a long term loss as those kids are the full price fans of the next decade and every kid who doesn't renew or who doesn't get taken in the first place is a long term negative financial impact when they don't follow the club in adulthood. The CEO may very well not be there in a decade, but we will (and even if we aren't, we'll want the club to be)  

Those same kids are also the one of the 'key drivers' of secondary spend. It's them who want the shirt, the £3.60 bag of sweets, the ludicrously marked up bottle of pop and the tacky Bloomfield Bear pencil case. It's also, in some cases, them that drive the adults to go, forcing granddad, mum, next door neighbour or whoever to take them. For every kids ticket there's an adult ticket and perhaps a pint or a pie and so on. 

Similar arguments apply to the 14-18 and 18-22 brackets. They're the people who will drag in mates, they're the people who will turn 'going to the match' into a thing their group of mates do.  The idea of the club as 'something to do' on a Saturday is important. It's a hook. There's millions of other things to do for this age group (not least the draw of Premier League football on a fire stick or FIFA on a console) and we should never take for granted that people will just come 'because the club is there' 

5 years ago, we were sold a vision - that vision was of a club that would do things the right way. The families that sit around me are good people. They're not 'entitled' and they don't expect things for free. They pay (and have in many cases for many years) the price to watch what is very often quite poor football. A sudden and in some price brackets, drastic, increase puts them in a difficult situation. There seems to be limited understanding of this from the club and the blunt response that 'cost of living effects us all' seems at best tone deaf and at worst, actually quite provocative. 

As a fan base, Blackpool fans can be demanding. This isn't a 'normal' football club and I don't envy those who have to deal with us sometimes. There's a particular sense of ownership or stewardship that this fan base feels for reason that are obvious. Sometimes that must be challenging - but in this instance, what is being expressed is something fundamental - this club is something we believe in, it's something we love and it's something that has to be for everyone and for the town and in particular, for the kids and young people and families that will be the lifeblood of the future. 

These prices literally don't affect me (my ticket is a £20 rise, which is ok in the context of inflation and my lad isn't impacted by the banding changes) and they won't affect many people expressing discontent. The club can stick its heels in and deny there's an issue but doing so is going to take us into a new season with an unresolved black cloud hanging over everyone and everything. 

The club is always keen to utilise the fan base in its marketing. The 'product' it sells is often the idea of being in and amongst a packed North stand in the midst of the chanting and bouncing passion. That atmosphere derives at least in part from who and what we are as a fan base. That is created in no small part by the recent history of the club but also, in no small part by the fact there's a lot of younger fans in that part of the ground. 

The club can either harness that or reject it - but by doing the latter, it will be chucking in the bin an enormous and unique selling point for the 'product' it is seeking to sell. That atmosphere will not be generated by a fan base that is resentful of the fact the board haven't even had the foresight to run pricing by any of the fan groups. 

In a town where so much of the infrastructure is for outsiders and there are obvious and well documented economic challenges, getting young people into the football ground and feeling a sense of identification and belonging with something local is really the basic foundation stone of building a club that serves a purpose in relation to its community. 

That might seem high minded but that was the stated intent of the ownership when they took over. Fast forward 5 and a bit years and when the CEO of the club makes a direct comparison between the once a year holiday maker focused attractions and their prices and the weekly commitment of supporting the local football team (who also, aren't necessarily offering a 'world class' product with a cast iron guarantee of a positive experience - which many of the other attractions are) - it feels as if there's a fundamental lack of local acumen and as if the original goal has been long forgotten. 

Whilst it's clearly the remit of the club to charge whatever prices it thinks are right, we're left as a fan base wondering what the hell the strategy now is. The CEO has issued a vague comment about price rises supporting the development of the team but when we look at the numbers that just doesn't seem to add up. The gains made don't seem significant at all. Developing a squad costs serious money - the gains made on kids prices (and as we've established already, this is by the CEO's own admission) won't bring in big name players or pay their wages. The maths simply don't add up. 

I'm not a marketing executive. I'm not a 'football expert' either - but it seems fairly clear that we're pitching the 'product' to a market in a way that doesn't make sense. The match day mark-up is steep and isn't going to attract walk on support in a town where a lot of employment is low paid and precarious and thus 'going when you can' is an important option. The kids and young adult prices are significantly less attractive than they were. People have less money in their pockets than they previously did and the club is actually at a lower ebb than it was when the pricing was lower. 

None of this (to my untrained eye) adds up to a long term approach designed around our circumstances and our location. It is clear that the owner does support the club financially and if he wants to step back from that to some degree, then that is his business, not mine - but it isn't clear to me how charging these prices impacts that in a meaningful way. In fact, I'd argue that over time, it could threaten the ambition to achieve sustainability. 

Commercially speaking, I'd also imagine that a club with a positive story to tell about its role in the community and a growing fan base of young people would be a better sell to sponsors and various partners than one without the above. Again, I'm not an expert in such things but generally I'd imagine that businesses want a positive atmosphere to be associated with their products and services and I'm left wondering how the tiny gains made from hiking the prices for kids will be reflected  in other ways on the balance sheet by sponsorship and partnership opportunities not forthcoming. Terry from Terry's Carpets and his ilk don't want to chuck money into a hole - they want something in return and that return can really only be the positive vibes that come with your brand being associated with something people love. 

I don't want this piece to become vitriolic. There's plenty of passionate, strong words elsewhere - but in the interview with the CEO there was something incredibly irritating (that's the polite version) in hearing about the 'alignment' between 'Critch,' David Downes and the CEO about the job they had to do at a point where the club itself seems to have spectacularly misaligned itself in terms of its relationship with the most important group of people involved with any football club - the supporters. 

There's something kind of uncomfortable about listening to self congratulatory back slapping between highly paid individuals when the only reason those people have a highly lucrative job in the first place is because there's a football club to give them it. The only reason there is a football club is because there are enough people who are willing to hand over a proportion of their income every week to watch that football club. The less the club seems to value the people who do that, the less the people who do that will be tempted to keep handing their cash over - and the less rope they'll be inclined to give the club when it makes (as is inevitable in football) mistakes or experiences a challenging time. 

In short - the club has got all the evidence it could ever have that it has made a mistake in its pricing structure. It can listen to a highly paid consultancy firm who have no skin in the game and seem to have mistaken Blackpool FC for a club with no empty seats and a stream of wealthier fans waiting outside to snap up tickets - or it can listen to the core support, the 'customer base' upon which it relies and without which, it can achieve nothing. It can harness an army of people who, if the club can move slightly on prices, will be keen to evangelise and market the tangerine cause (for no cost) to anyone who will listen, or it can start the season at odds with that same group in a fog of discontent and with a sense that things are sliding in a direction no one really wants to go in.  

It's up to them. 

Onward!

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Cheers Marv!

He wasn't very good at first. Then he was really good. Then he got even better. Then he was brilliant. Suddenly he wasn't as good any more. Then he was quite good again... and now... He's gone. 

It feels like something has gone a bit wrong somewhere. The model was to buy an unpolished diamond, get it gleaming and place it in the shop window and repeat. 

In Marv's case, it's hard to imagine there wasn't a hoard of window shoppers outside, gazing upon his talents with covetous looks at one point. I always imagined he'd go to Southampton or West Brom or some such side. The kind of team you could imagine in either the Premier League or the championship. We'd get about 5 million for him and, painful as it would be, we'd wish him well. No more sensational last ditch blocks, no more popping up in a blur of limbs to bundle it home. No more fantastic moments where, after a corner, he has the task of playing like a winger for 10 seconds till someone takes pity on him and gives him an easy pass out of incongruity. 

Perhaps the problem is - it's a different world now. Marvin's a good player. At times he's a really great defender but good as he is, the market for 'mid career, come up the hard way, comes with a few flaws but play them in the right way and they'll do a good job' players isn't what it once was. It's all full internationals from all around the world and snaffling all the youth talents making running an academy kind of academic for anyone not at the top table these days.

Maybe he'll rock up at Stoke or somewhere like that - perhaps he'll slot right into one of the promoted teams. I hope he goes up, not sideways because, when you take away the moments of brain fade where his body looks too awkward for the job he's got to do and you give him a run to find his form, he's some player. He might have looked ungainly playing conservative defensive triangles but my god, he was beautiful in full defensive flight. 

I've waxed lyrical about yer Bowlers, yer Povedas and yer Dembeles but show me a more graceful sight than when Marvin spotted danger and. like a thoroughbred racehorse, set off at a gallop before, leaping, stretching, extending his telescopic limbs and taking the ball cleanly. His rushes out of defence to tidy up a loose ball were at one point, an art form. Nothing was as reassuring when up against it in the Championship as him putting his foot through it and launching a long raking ball, turning the play around with a punt and then looking side to side, holding his arms out to invite others to get in line. 

Popular imagination would have it, he needed nursing through by Keogh (and he did play his best football next to Uncle Richard) but he was a key part in our promotion defensive unit up until his injury and I think, after rocky starts to both this season (and the last) played himself into form and certainly this year, was more good than bad in my opinion. There were mistakes but without him, we were bullied more than once. He may not ever have been vocal enough to completely convince as captain - but at his zenith, he led our back line with real distinction. 

For all that it's time to turn a page, I am sad that I will not get to read the book of Marv anymore. I felt Virtue, Lavery and Connolly, for various reasons were ready to go. All 3 of them had given a decent account of themselves at one time or another - but Marv maybe still had something to give. It's not to be though and perhaps we need a player who is more comfortable with the ball at their feet and if we're going to aim to morph into the total football side we rarely look like but the rhetoric suggests we want to be then I guess Marvin would be best suited somewhere where his job is to defend first and foremost. 

He'll be remembered fondly. 

Cheers Marv! 

. 

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Neither fish nor fowl - Season Review

Kaddy takes the ball in. He does that little tease that you've come to expect, showing the ball then whipping it away from the now committed defender. He spins in an instant, making teammates and opposition alike look heavy and leaden footed to a man, the defender is groping at air, Kaddy has spirited himself away with the ball, advancing on his next victim, one part assassin, one part street magician and one part contortionist. 

I've seen few players as adept at controlling the ball. I've seen no one as brilliant at seeming not to control the ball - but come away with it so many times that the initial touch can't be accidental. He plays with the mind of the defender and he almost always comes out on top. He sprawls on the pitch, the play hesitates around him and he rolls and bounces back up, like a cat falling from a wall, the descent, the landing, the ascent and the sprint away from the incident all one move. Other footballers are mere clumsy oafs lumbering gracelessly. They're big dogs barking hopelessly at a cat in a tree. 

We're losing. It's the last day of the season. Losing is not an option. Kaddy takes it. 'Go on Kaddy' is the one thought of 1700 tangerine souls. Read the above description but append one final crucial detail - this time, he doesn't come away with the ball. This time he lies on the turf looking hard done by (and he is hard done by) because the referee sees the ankle tap he's drawn as legitimate and the other team race away like grand national horses leaving behind an equine fall and score a third goal on the break. 

That's the season right there. Kaddy wasn't quite enough. That's not a criticism of him. I don't think I could muster one if I tried. It's a criticism of the overall picture and how dominated it is by one diminutive boy wonder and how, as wonderful as it was, that was never going to be quite enough.  

It's hard to sum this season up. The season before was easy enough. It was shit. Next. 

This season has had just enough highlights to keep the fire of belief burning - but too little fuel for that flame to really get dancing. We've played at a level above this division a few times. It's hard to look beyond the dismantling of Pompey and Bolton as examples of why we should have done much better. We gave a decent strength Forest side two games where we looked anything but mid table third tier. 

When it worked, it worked. On good days, you could see all the things that Critchley wants us to be - working as a unit, moving the ball quickly, soaking up pressure and springing decisively on the opposition, pressing in groups with a shape to the side. If you could take a small subsection of our games then you'd genuinely believe we were heading for another spell in the Premier League. 

The problem is, those few exceptional games are, well... exceptions. Of course, you can't play well every single week - it's ridiculous to read too much into a few poor performances - but equally, it's ridiculous to put too much faith in a few good ones. Mick McCarthy managed us to one of the most convincing wins we've had since Holloway - should we have kept faith with Mick on the basis of that result? Of course not. 

Burton Albion away. It's cold. We've travelled fucking miles to get here on Boxing Day abandoning family and friends, eschewing the opportunity to rest and feed up in the bleak midwinter. Why have we done this? Because we're going to see a display of committed and passionate football from a team of quality players. We're going to enjoy ourselves as we watch them swarm all over a dogged but limited side and ultimately dismantle them. C'mon Pool!!! 

The final whistle goes. I never boo - but I feel like telling the whole lot of them to fuck off and give their wages to charity because they don't deserve them. I'll forgive Dale and Sonny because they came on with about 3 minutes to go and ran in a forward direction but the game was one long sideways pass followed by an aimless punt from a centre back to no one in particular and repeat. Nothing changed. We just did THE SAME THING ALL FUCKING GAME. I'm still seething 6 months later. 

At times we've looked as threatening as a primary school pet. We've been docile, we've been accommodating. We've been timid and frankly, at times, frightened by the opposition. Burton mugged us. Cheltenham mugged us and laughed in our faces. Lincoln mugged us, laughed in our faces and then pissed on us. Leyton Orient mugged us, laughed in our faces, pissed on us and then daubed rude words on our property. Wigan didn't so much mug us as make us give them our dinner money and then spent it on fags which they smoked whilst flicking their ash on our pitifully sad little faces. 

I could probably go on. Sometimes we've been really *not very good* and usually it's been against a side who have negated our press by not playing from the back and hit a strong forward quite quickly. Richie Wellens basically spelled it out in his post match press conference. He more or less said 'Blackpool are more than fine against other teams like themselves - but if you get it up them, they fall apart' and you can't really argue with his Mancunian drawl. 

The mystery of the season has been the tactical rigidity. The only real change has been accommodating Dembele and moving from a flatter more solid three to a more fluid triangle with Kaddy as the tip. Outside of that, the times when we've shifted shape I could likely count on one hand. We went to a four at the back once or twice (the dreadful tinpot cup semi being an example) in the dying minutes but on the rare occasion we did anything other than swap one player for another, it was usually when we were making one last doomed roll of the dice. 

Stylistically though, we have changed things. A formation and the way you play aren't the same things. We've played possession football and tried to slip the ball through. We've eschewed possession football and tried to hit the big man. We've found a balance at times and done a bit of both. As we've already said - when it's worked - it's worked - but when it hasn't, it's looked aimless. It's never really coalesced into the final product. Good teams have the manner of a machine. They play with a routine certainty and mechanical precision - we've often looked like a blueprint or prototype as opposed to real deal. An idea that not all the parts have been ordered for perhaps. 

When we've gone all in on possession football we often haven't looked good enough. We have players like Marvin, Callum Connolly and CJ who just aren't touch and go Cruyff's Ajax players. When we've gone direct, we've often looked like a tragicomic pastiche of a football team who've run out of ideas. Kaddy, Sonny and plenty more aren't exactly classic Crazy Gang era Wimbledon. At points, we've hit a blend and it's worked. In the run in, we played brilliantly against Barnsley (for 70 minutes) with the skilful players picking up the pieces Beesley made their defence drop but Beesley is typical of the season overall in that he's not dominant enough to do that to every defence he comes up against. He can do it *sometimes* but he's never going to assert himself against every centre back in the league. 

It's early in the season. We're optimistic. Critchley is talking up 'front foot football' and seems to have thrown off the bodywarmer of caution and embraced the hoodie of attack instead. We've brushed aside Burton and played really well at Derby in the league cup, I can't wait for this game! 

I feel like I'm still waiting for this game. It just doesn't seem to happen. Port Vale are happy with a point and we're not sure what to do about that. At some point it feels as if everyone says 'well, a point will be fine' to each other and we're treated to a game where both sides mostly defend whilst the other team doesn't attack. That is not 'front foot football' in anyone's book. Not even some party apparatchik rewriting Soviet history and turning Stalin induced famine into a glorious triumph of agrarian plenty would have the gall to describe this game as 'interesting' 

This game is part of a run of 0-0 draws. We then lose 5-0 to Wolves and suffer the aforementioned indignity at the hands of Lincoln. It is evident that we aren't very creative. In fact, it is evident that, in creative terms, we look like a set of dried up felt tips. We press... and nothing else. There's this young lad with the touch of an angel and an eye for goal Neil. His name is Rob. Rob Apter. Worth a try? Pop him on as a sub perhaps? 

We don't score for five games and loan him to Tranmere. He's 'not ready' but Callum Connolly is bristling with preparedness and offering goal threat and skills, tricks and impudence... It's all fine. 

I'm riffing on things that have annoyed me. I was already annoyed by Critchley before he came back so it's kind of natural that I will seek to find fault - and I think there are faults in his rigid thinking and lack of risk. I think we have made too many decisions calculated around solidity and avoiding defeat and not risked losing to win a game often enough. Have we ever chucked Marvin up for the last 10 minutes? It's simplistic stuff and it doesn't come from a spreadsheet analysis of data bra numbers but it's a bit of symbol - we've very rarely chucked the kitchen sink - in fact, some weeks, I don't think we've even gone into the kitchen and instead, just slumped on the couch in the lounge and accepted defeat or a draw with an apathetic shrug. 

Lets be fair though. It's not been that bad. I'm writing as if we'd got relegated. I'm writing as if Steve Bushell and Steve Garvey were running about for us. They weren't. 

CJ had a run of games earlier in the season that convinced us to make a chant for him. The fact he got a contract out of it may or may not be a coincidence. He was actually really good for a bit (*). Jimmy played out of his skin for a good while at the start of the year. He wasn't just 'solid' - he was remarkably composed and doing it at both ends of the pitch. Dougall looked a class above the division in the run up to Christmas and got us ticking and players like Carey benefited massively from it. Jordan Rhodes arrived and was the definition of 'if there's any young players watching out there, take a lesson from how he does it' and alongside him, the other strikers seemed to be touched by his presence and gifted with a newfound understanding of what to do. Owen Dale surprised me in how effectively he played the wing back role and the determination with which he performed each week, Ollie Casey showed he'd learned something at Forest Green and could play with a calmness. Grimmy played himself into some rare form and pulled out some stunning saves. Sonny clatttered shots against the woodwork, whistled them just wide and then eventually found his range. Albie Morgan had a similar and even more convincing journey, going from a bit of a whirlwind where not a lot came off, to looking both solid and dangerous consistently. 

* He was! 

There is and has been quality this year. It would be churlish to say otherwise. We've also had poor luck - we've not been decimated by injury or misfortune, but we've seemed to suffer from key players being unavailable whenever we've hit a run of form. It's that sense that whenever we've got the Volvo up to speed, it's stalled. Sometimes I think it's Critchley's foot on the brake, but I don't think you can blame him for everything. We've finished the season with a greater solidity. We're not a clown car of a team as we were the year before - but we are a division below so perhaps the relative gains are par for the course? 

Lavery's continuing patchy availability has murdered us. It's not that I think Lavs would have scored 40 goals - but that to play a possession and pressing based  game, you by definition need the energy of that kind of player to stretch and worry a defence. If you doubt me, remove Yates from our last League 1 team and now try and imagine us getting promoted. You can't.

We needed Lavery (and another Lavery to back him up) - Instead, we got Rhodes - who was magnificent - but not the player the system needed to work as intended. As soon as Lavery (and indeed Joseph) were unavailable, we were playing a Frankenstein version of our original plan. When that plan became embedded, then Rhodes himself got injured and we had even less options. 

Kenny Dougall probably played some of his best football in a Blackpool shirt this season. He was tremendous for a period. We all know what happened next. Albie Morgan came in and picked up his mantle to an extent. He got himself playing really well. I began to grudgingly think 'Critch has done well with this lad - he's learned the discipline to choose his moment and is looking like a real player' and then he got injured. 

Players we might have thought we could have relied upon had dodgy spells. Marvin (who I think has actually been decent overall) had the worst spell of his career early on. Callum Connoly looks like he's forgotten anything he knew 2 years ago about playing football. This was the man who smashed his way to dominance in the midfield at Craven Cottage against a side now well established in the top flight. Where is that player? Even Grimmy, the darling of the latter half of the season was wobbly early on. Kyle Joseph's confidence has been in the gutter and Ollie Norburn just hasn't worked out as we hoped he would. If anyone can tell me what Matty Virtue was for this season and why he was there at all then I'd be very grateful... I think he partly sums up something - I like Matty. He's a wholehearted player. He's got a decent football brain. He's had no chance to find any form at all. Other players (Joseph) have been waterboarded - pushed into the team, taken out, repeat, whilst others (CJ) have been able to play themselves into form and back out again with no real consequences. 

I'm really trying to be balanced. I could quite easily write a polemic about everything that's pissed me off but I don't think that's how I want this blog to be. 

To me, it's been a strange season. It feels like it's never quite started. I've picked a few games out but there's loads I feel as if I can't remember. We won plenty but we didn't wholly convince. We lost a fair few but we didn't get twatted. It felt a lot of the time as if we were playing within ourselves. Sometimes it seemed as if we didn't have a plan - and that (in a curious and counter intuitive way) made it seem as if we were sticking stubbornly to a plan. By that, I mean at times, I found it baffling that 11 players who play football every single day of their working lives couldn't fashion a way to attack more effectively between them. I also couldn't understand why a bunch of coaches who spend all their time thinking about football couldn't come up with anything to change that. 

I come to the end of this season not sure how I feel about next year. I know that Sonny Carey is a rare talent and those who doubt it are fools. I know Grimmy is brilliant. I know I like Marv despite his shaky early season form. I know that Beesley will always try his best and that counts for something and so on. I know what I know but I don't know what I want. 

I know Critchley will talk up 'quality and intent' and I know he's previously put together a very effective team. I know he's found some diamonds in the past. I also know that no matter what he says, he's fundamentally pragmatic and I think this season has been him trying to stretch the idea of 'learn a system' as far as he humanly can. He's pushed the notion of 'I don't care about this win - I care more about the overall picture' to an extreme. At times, the deliberate lack of intervention and like for like substitutes can only be an attempt to play the long game. I'm just not convinced that you get out of League 1 like that - that no matter what preferred system you play - you have to adapt because the variation in styles is more pronounced than at higher level where every team has the technical ability to play a certain way. 

I have a grudging respect for that stubbornness but I also don't see the same impishness and connection that was there first time around. I see a man who can still palpably coach and instruct - but who seems, rather than bravely 'sticking to a principle' (like, say Postecoglou or perhaps at our level, Darren Ferguson) has got a bit lost within his own idea. He seems frozen sometimes. He looks pained - as if he knows he should be doing something, but he can't break out of the preconceived plan. Essentially, the season is summed up by 'when it works, it works and when it doesn't it doesn't' and that's the problem. I loved how managers like McMahon and Holloway had a similar ethos - in the sense that, they were committed to a style and a set up and would go at teams. It would backfire and we'd forgive and move on because there was a real poetry and spirit to what we did. It's harder to forgive that fixed thinking when the highs are more sparse and the style is based more around containment and calculation of risk. 

The whole thing is now underscored by an element of uncertainty. What happens next? The possibility that Simon's steady ship may not be as stable as we thought is a concern. It's probably not wise to speculate too much on the legal business of very rich people but it's a clear symbol of how football clubs (that mean the world to thousands of people) are (as we know all too well) at the mercy of the whims and status of individuals. There seems an imbalance in all of this. I have no idea of what the charge against Sadler even means really. I don't really know what a hedge fund is and I don't give a fuck. I care about Saturday at 3pm when the world is a green field and the team is tangerine and I couldn't give a shit about gambling on stocks and stuff. I think that's how most people feel. It all feels kind of 'insecure' in the sense that the circumstances of one person (for good or ill) can have so much impact on the other 99.99999999999999% of people connected to 'the club' - that's football and it's too important to too many people to be subject to the capricious fortunes of the very tiny subset of people who can buy into it. 

Who knows? I don't. We need a page turning and we need a real overhaul. It's inevitable now. Our best players were on loan and the ones who weren't might well leave anyway. We've got a small core of decent players but we need more variety, more pace and a proper forward line. We need some plan B football to go with the plan A football and we'd like the plan A football to be more risky. 

We may be stuck with him, but he's got to get it right this time and we've got to get what's around him right too. 

Cheers Kaddy!

Readers concerned about the potential status of the club in the light of recent news could always join the MCLF Patreon page. You don't get anything in return other than the warm glow of knowing that you've supported a man spouting shite in trying to find more time to spout more shite. You will, however, also have my promise that should Patreon support (current funds: £3) reach the level of about £10,000,000. I will buy the club. I will of course install myself as manager and lead us like an autocratic dictator and it will be an utter failure that will end in toxic rancour and recriminations. If that's not a reason to pledge, then I'm sorry, I don't know what else would be...

Alternatively, 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

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