Turf Moor Halloween Horror Show

For a team to be successful at any level of football, it needs to have a player who is capable of scoring goals on a regular basis. In the Premiership, the likes of Wayne Rooney and Robin Van Persie are seen as two of the best players in the world, as they are capable of scoring goals that can change games, and change seasons. However, if you ask these players why they are so successful, then they will usually say that it is down to the other players on the pitch, and their hard work, which allows them to be the ones who grab the headlines.

If you drop down to the Championship, you won’t find many better natural goal scorers than the one currently occupying the Blackpool number 9 shirt. Kevin Phillips’ 6 goals in the Championship this season in Tangerine have moved him on to 260 professional goals, in a career moving into its 18^th year, starting at Baldock Town in 1994, which has seen him named as the only Englishman ever to win the European Golden Boot after his incredible efforts in the 1999/2000, which saw him become the second man to ever score over 30 goals in a 38-game Premiership season.

During Saturday evening’s game against Burnley, however, Phillips was a clear example of a striker starved of the creative player that makes the whole team tick. The absence of Gary Taylor-Fletcher, a late withdrawal with a back injury, showed just how good a player he is. Taylor-Fletcher, who is a vast improvement on the player that arrived at the club as a striker turned right midfielder under Simon Grayson when Pool first reached the Championship, has since returned to the middle due to his lack of pace, and it has led to him becoming one of the first names on the team sheet, as he continually weighs in with important goals, sometimes spectacular, and has the football brain capable of unlocking the tightest of defences.

He is the complete embodiment of what the Blackpool resurgence over the last ten years in one player. Released by Leyton Orient in 2002, he has undergone a career transformation. A good spell at Huddersfield led to a move to Blackpool in 2007, and he has become an integral part of the Seasiders’ plans going forward. His recent move back into the midfield, albeit in a central role, has led to a strong presence in midfield that has also allowed for pace on either flank to compliment Phillips in the centre.

Any Blackpool fan who sat through the torturous 90 minutes at Turf Moor on Saturday will agree that Taylor-Fletcher was a massive miss. He brings a forward thinking, optimistic approach to the forward line, and a desire that spreads throughout the team of a player who knows that this level of football seemed a world away when he ploughed along in the lower leagues at the turn of the millennium.  There was no invention, a lack of pace due to the seeming inability to bring Tom Ince into the game, and as the ball took so long to reach him, whenever Ince did manage to get onto the ball, he was crowded out by the Burnley defence, who, to their credit, negated Blackpool’s strengths quickly.

Blackpool were outfought, outplayed, and outclassed by a Burnley team who hardly had to move out of first gear. The selection of Brett Ormerod ahead of Callum McManaman, who was so impressive last weekend against Nottingham Forest, furrowed many a brow in the away end, but this was nothing compared to the desperate attempts to work out why Ormerod, standing at a mere 5”10, was the target of every long ball played by Blackpool for the 73 minutes that Ormerod spent on the pitch.  Ormerod failed to win a single header against Andre Amougou and David Edgar, both of whom are extremely powerful, and deceptively quick.

The midfield was anonymous. Barry Ferguson struggled to keep up with the pace of the game, Keith Southern put in his usual scrapping performance, and there is certainly a place for him in the side, but Burnley were never threatened, and Jonjo Shelvey was yet again anonymous, only making any contribution to the game on 2 occasions, one for his excellent goal in the 93^rd minute, and the other a dreadful tackle in the first half, with his studs up, which should have resulted in him being shown a straight red card.

Matt Gilks was, in all honesty, powerless with all 3 goals, with the only possible complaint being the positioning of the wall for the Wallace free kick, but the strike would have beaten any wall, no matter where it was placed. The main concern, for me, would be the centre half pairing. Charlie Austin and Jay Rodriguez are not a particularly large centre forward pairing. They are capable of holding their own when asked to perform the physical side of the game, but Ian Evatt and Craig Cathcart should have been able to deal with them. Cathcart failed to win a single header all game, and Evatt was easily manoeuvred around the pitch by Austin, who showed Blackpool exactly what they could have had, if they had shown genuine intent when he was available at Swindon.

What should genuinely worry Blackpool fans is that there was a sense that there was no passion behind the shirt. There was a lack of desire and passion to perform on the big day from the men who have been the physical incarnation of team spirit under Ian Holloway. A lot of work needs to be done in a long space of time, and Holloway needs the fans to back the players to the hilt if they are going to get out of this current slump.

Forest at Home-3 points dropped.

The idea of introducing a player who is a bit of an unknown quantity into a game is always a risk. As seen at the highest level, with Manchester City introducing Mario Balotelli into a far greater first team role than the one he occupied last season. Balotelli, however, is a player who has proved he can succeed at that level, as he showed again in the Manchester derby this weekend, giving more evidence to support that he is one of Europe’s finest talents when his mind is in the right place.

There is an argument that wholly supports the idea of trying someone who isn’t known. There is no possible way that Steve Cotterill or anyone at Nottingham Forest could have possibly set up plans to deal with Gerardo Bruna, so when he was named on the substitutes bench, it looked like a decision that would draw a few gasps when the team sheet is first mentioned, but then make more sense as people worked it out.

The problem is, for the gamble to work, everything needs to work out and sit perfectly in the youngster’s favour, especially with someone making his debut in English league football. Add in the fact that Bruna was schooled at Real Madrid, not known as a place where young players are taught the rough and tumble style that many teams will apply to their game when they visit Bloomfield Road this season, and that the man he was replacing is the current darling of the Blackpool fans, and it becomes a pressure cooker for a young Argentinean with no first team experience. Then add that Nottingham Forest had just broken a spell of Blackpool pressure with what proved to be the winning goal, and that there was only 7 minutes for Blackpool to come up with a response, and it is quite a difficult position to be in.

It is difficult not to feel sorry for Bruna. He will be the public face of the fan’s bemusement at yet more strange substitutions from Ian Holloway, who took off 2 of Blackpool’s better players on the day in Tom Ince and Callum McManaman, the former in particular causing a mountain of problems on the right hand side, causing Forest full back Chris Gunter, supposedly one of the best full backs in the second tier of English football, although it is possible Gunter picked up a slight hamstring injury in the second half, and replaced them with 2 players with a grand total of 7 career professional appearances, all of them belonging to Craig Sutherland.

The addition of fresh legs to an attack slowing down after a long day’s work was the reason given by ‘Ollie’ in his radio post-match interview, yet the simple solution to this would surely be to replace the older, slower legs, such as Gary Taylor-Fletcher and Kevin Phillips, who, despite his fantastic goal just before half time, had a poor game. Chances that you would normally expect Phillips to gobble up without thinking twice passed him by, including failing to convert an Ince cross-shot into the net from a yard out with the goal at his mercy, and a golden chance late on from just inside the penalty area which he only managed to locate the upper echelons of the South Stand. Taylor-Fletcher, despite all of his efforts, failed to produce a final ball at crucial times, and though the stats will say he has come out of the game with an assist to his name, even Taylor-Fletcher must agree that Phillips had a fair bit to do when he gave him the ball.

It would be cruel to lay the blame of the defeat at the feet of Bruna, who did show glimpses of talent, though his keenness only to use his left foot may be his undoing at this level, as there were many areas of the Blackpool side that were found wanting by a Nottingham Forest side who were willing to get their hands dirty if it meant retuning home with all 3 points. The set piece demons have returned, both goals coming from basic routines. The first goal coming from a fairly standard, floated cross from McGugan at the corner, and a free header for Wes Morgan at the back post is a clear sign that we missed the physical presence that Ian Evatt brings to the back four, and switching off at a simple throw in is unforgivable, especially when your opponents have someone as deadly as Radoslaw Majewski, who can find the net from literally anywhere in the final third, as he has shown a number of times since arriving in English football 2 years ago.

But before I am criticised for whinging about what was, in all honesty, a vast improvement on recent displays, I will say that there are big positives to take from the game. Gilks proved once again that he is one of the best shot stoppers in the division, though he could do with learning from Lee Camp on the distribution front. Eardley is improving all the time, no matter how many times he is moaned at for being sat too deep. These moans coming from the same fans that were furious whenever he was forward last season, saying he was too naïve, but Eardley’s main weakness when he first joined the club was the defensive side of his game. This, it is clear to see, is improving all the time, and when he finds the right balance in his positional play, which, in all likelihood, will need to involve him adding a yard of pace, to allow for defensive covering and beating his man down the line.

The midfield painfully missed Keith Southern’s presence. For weeks it has seemed that Ferguson and Southern cannot function in the same midfield, but a more succinct diagnosis would be that the midfield cannot function without Southern. It lacked bite, drive and pace, which Southern adds. Shelvey looked lost at times, looking to play the pass too quickly at others, picking completely the wrong pass the rest of the time. He looks devoid of confidence after being such a non-entity at West Ham, which the rest of the team has recovered from far quicker than Shelvey has, but it is clear there is plenty more to come from him.

As mentioned, Taylor-Fletcher and Phillips were both off their best, but Ince and McManaman out wide caused problems all game, McManaman’s raw pace and Ince’s trickery in possession providing a constant threat, but Forest had an answer for the majority of what was thrown at them.

All in all, Blackpool will play a lot worse than that this season and win, let alone pick up the point that they probably deserved. For proof of this, see last Tuesday night against Doncaster Rovers. What should please Blackpool fans is that they are still within touching distance of the playoffs, without really putting in a performance worthy of a playoff finish at the end of the season since the opening day at Hull. As is always said, the sign of a good side is to keep picking up points when they are not playing well.