Time for a rethink...and quickly!

B

BISONS

Well-known member
In truth this terrible start to the season is due to both the manager and owner, but mainly the owner. He appointed Appleton, with very limited experience at these levels, off the back of 2 decent stints in Lg1. I'd hope that the connection to Mansford had nothing to do with it but it's hard to see how he got the job otherwise.

The defence is considerably worse than last season, shipping goals left, right and centre. How many times already this season have we let in 3?! The midfield is lightweight (still) and over 40 odd games will be found wanting all too often in this league. Aside from Jerry's purple patch, which came to a grinding halt last night, the forward line is weak. Now this can all be thrown at the door of the recruitment process and you'd be hard pressed to find any Blackpool fan consider it a success. Is that the only reason?

We are hamstrung by the small budget, but thats nothing new. The new over cautious approach to signings only serves to make the small budget go less far, the lad from Accy is testament to this. We've had teams built under far more restrictive constraints and managed to gain promotion to the PL.

The mistakes made by the powers that be on the football side of the club (the only bit that matters to the fan) have caused the current slump. Poor managerial appointment, poor recruitment policy, failing to invest adequately made only worse by selling our 2 best performers for them not to be replaced. Sadler will learn i'm sure but without an injection of quality in January and a new experienced manager at this level before, then this club, that should be on the crest of a wave will be heading right back where it came from a couple of years ago.
 
BISONS said:
In truth this terrible start to the season is due to both the manager and owner, but mainly the owner. He appointed Appleton, with very limited experience at these levels, off the back of 2 decent stints in Lg1. I'd hope that the connection to Mansford had nothing to do with it but it's hard to see how he got the job otherwise.

The defence is considerably worse than last season, shipping goals left, right and centre. How many times already this season have we let in 3?! The midfield is lightweight (still) and over 40 odd games will be found wanting all too often in this league. Aside from Jerry's purple patch, which came to a grinding halt last night, the forward line is weak. Now this can all be thrown at the door of the recruitment process and you'd be hard pressed to find any Blackpool fan consider it a success. Is that the only reason?

We are hamstrung by the small budget, but thats nothing new. The new over cautious approach to signings only serves to make the small budget go less far, the lad from Accy is testament to this. We've had teams built under far more restrictive constraints and managed to gain promotion to the PL.

The mistakes made by the powers that be on the football side of the club (the only bit that matters to the fan) have caused the current slump. Poor managerial appointment, poor recruitment policy, failing to invest adequately made only worse by selling our 2 best performers for them not to be replaced. Sadler will learn i'm sure but without an injection of quality in January and a new experienced manager at this level before, then this club, that should be on the crest of a wave will be heading right back where it came from a couple of years ago.
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Agree with most of that.
Unfortunately by the time January comes round we could be balls deep in a relegation battle. How many players want to come in those sircumstances?
 
BISONS said:
In truth this terrible start to the season is due to both the manager and owner, but mainly the owner. He appointed Appleton, with very limited experience at these levels, off the back of 2 decent stints in Lg1. I'd hope that the connection to Mansford had nothing to do with it but it's hard to see how he got the job otherwise.

The defence is considerably worse than last season, shipping goals left, right and centre. How many times already this season have we let in 3?! The midfield is lightweight (still) and over 40 odd games will be found wanting all too often in this league. Aside from Jerry's purple patch, which came to a grinding halt last night, the forward line is weak. Now this can all be thrown at the door of the recruitment process and you'd be hard pressed to find any Blackpool fan consider it a success. Is that the only reason?

We are hamstrung by the small budget, but thats nothing new. The new over cautious approach to signings only serves to make the small budget go less far, the lad from Accy is testament to this. We've had teams built under far more restrictive constraints and managed to gain promotion to the PL.

The mistakes made by the powers that be on the football side of the club (the only bit that matters to the fan) have caused the current slump. Poor managerial appointment, poor recruitment policy, failing to invest adequately made only worse by selling our 2 best performers for them not to be replaced. Sadler will learn i'm sure but without an injection of quality in January and a new experienced manager at this level before, then this club, that should be on the crest of a wave will be heading right back where it came from a couple of years ago.
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👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
 
I'm not convinced by Appleton at all. From a management perspective I understood the Grayson appointment - a conservative safe-ish pair of hands to stabilise the clusterflop that the club was. I understood the Critchley appointment from the perspective of being a slightly left field club and he was a credible left field appointment and building an infrastructure around principles that Critchley had been well versed in. Appleton seemed to me as a backward step, and looking at it critically a management decision based on low risk, in a environment where risk is difficult to articulate (Sorry I've got my management consultant head on) - the risk of being relegated or the risk of being a continual championship also ran are equally problematic in my book.

Blackpool has some unique aspects to it, and the management of the club needs to address those quirks, (i could say that about a lot of clubs and obviously other fans would say that about their own clubs but most are quite identikit) but the day to day management team seem very standardised, its like they are reading from the typical manual; Ten Steps to Football Club Management, and following it blindly.

This season there is a definite fan disconnect to the head coach, its like we are all scared of being jilted again, so we have to be more cynical about this one. As a result there seems to be less connection to the team as well. I'm not sure that some of the commercial activities are in line with a club rebuilding a base after forty years of general abuse, it seems like the homogenised approach and many of the commercial activities seem to be launched faulty. The web site was really bad when they launched TTV was a bit of a nightmare after they dropped i follow. Communication from the club is a bit haphazard.

On the pitch I think the problem is one of lack of organisation and preparation, constantly trying to fit square pegs in round holes when often there is a roundish peg for that hole. I think there may be a similar problem at the management level. the club is trying to adapt a five year plan to a new set of circumstances, but i am probably jumping to conclusions.
 
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I think our biggest mistake was not going for an experienced championship manager like Tony mowbray or Mark Warburton then they would be not as much risk of us going down.
 
KieranBFC said:
I think our biggest mistake was not going for an experienced championship manager like Tony mowbray or Mark Warburton then they would be not as much risk of us going down.
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There was hardly any suitable available managers when Critchley did his runner.
 
I put last night’s performance down to fatigue. To play 20 minutes with 9 men at full throttle is going to seriously reduce the capacity of any team to reproduce that level of performance about 75 hours later. They were running out of gas after. 25 mins last night. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Whoever plays on Saturday, I believe there will be a reaction.
 
A 38 or 40 game season for the Championship instead of a fatiguing 46 is the way forward IMO.Bring it on soon EFL.👍
 
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