Post by QPR Report on May 13, 2010 6:47:39 GMT
Guardian/Paul Wilson
Ian Holloway on threshold of a towering achievement at BlackpoolThe team who finished sixth in the Championship have the courage, the self-belief and the gifted manager to reach dreamland
Odds on Blackpool playing in the Premier League next season will have shortened considerably after their stunning demolition of Nottingham Forest in the play-off second leg at the City ground, and were it possible to obtain prices for this sort of thing Ian Holloway's rollercoaster ride would already be a clear favourite for most overused cliché.
As the team qualifying from sixth place, Blackpool must still be regarded as underdogs in the playoff final at Wembley on Saturday week, though the manner in which they dispatched the third-placed side to make light of a gap of nine points in the final standings underlined the fact that Holloway's players have hit form at exactly the right time and are good enough to pose problems for just about any Championship opponents. Scoring four audacious goals at Forest's hitherto well-defended home spoke volumes for the Seasiders' temperament and ability to cope with big games, just as storming back after going behind to an early goal (as they had in the first leg) demonstrated character and confidence.
"When you play in big games you've got to show courage to take the ball, you've got to show bravery, composure and arrogance," Forest's Billy Davies said, meaning that his side didn't and Blackpool did. "They handled it better than we did, they showed more nous. I think the play-off came at the wrong time for us. We were playing better in December."
That is exactly the thing about playoffs. They come at the end of the season – clearly they cannot be arranged anywhere else – and some teams are ready for them while others, even those who finished higher up the table, are all played out. Nostalgia for the old system under which Forest would already have been promoted is permissible, but the new system has been around for long enough now and everyone signed up for it. Teams know what they have to do, and there is even a somewhat brutal school of thought that says if you cannot deal with two or three extra games against tired opponents from your own division you would probably not make much of a success of promotion in any case.
Take Forest, for example. In old money they had a successful season, finishing third behind two exceptionally strong teams, but had they gone up they would almost certainly have come straight down again. Even Davies admits as much. "For a long time I've been saying this club isn't ready," the Forest manager said. "I give the players great credit for finishing third, but had we gone up we would have been the youngest team ever to enter the Premier League, which would have been a big worry."
Blackpool can have that worry now, as they prepare for their big day at Wembley. Not because they too have a young team – they don't – but because they are about as far from being ready for the Premier League as the Bolton Wanderers left-back was from Stanley Matthews in the 1953 FA Cup final. Or about as far from being ready for the Premier League as Burnley appeared this time last year, if you prefer to put it another way. Yet like Burnley they have a lot of self-belief, and they have an outstanding manager who is mostly responsible for that self-belief. Holloway knows better than most that almost anywhere you care to look Blackpool is not ready – the Bloomfield Road pitch, the training ground, the feeble stadium capacity of not quite 10,000 and the horrendous one-way system around the ground that probably could not cope with many more 3pm visitors in any case – yet he views those matters as mere detail.
When you have a winning team, doing well, then you have accomplished the hard part and the rest can be sorted out later. "There are loads of things we need to work on, and I can think of lots of ways in which we might not be ready to go up," he explained. "But sometimes your team can take you up whether you are ready or not. A team playing well can catapult you forward."
For any manager to haul a club of Blackpool's size and sleepy backwater status into the Premier League would be – wait for it – a towering achievement. And as Holloway has utterly transformed the side in a single season using exactly the same players – Charlie Adam and DJ Campbell have clearly been influential acquisitions, even if the latter is only on loan, though both were at Blackpool when the present manager arrived – he already deserves all the plaudits going for pure coaching, getting the best out of a group of players by organisation and ingenuity without recourse to the chequebook.
Yet though this ought to be Holloway's finest hour he is slightly uncomfortable with himself at the moment, as could be seen when he was interviewed on the pitch as his players celebrated their City Ground win. All that was required was a beam and a few happy words, he didn't need to start telling jokes or open a new chapter in the Holloway book of witty one-liners, but he seemed to bridle at the suggestion that Blackpool were somewhere between underdogs and no-hopers and ended up talking about his year out of work and the fact that he has come back as a serious football manager.
No one actually doubts that, even if Holloway has become convinced of the need to change his image. He feels that his reputation as a comedian got in the way when he was out of work, and is now attempting to come over a bit more dour and sensible in the hope that his ability to supervise football team gets a bit more recognition than his ability to make people laugh. It might work, though it seems a bit drastic. Holloway should just be himself. He is a babbling West Country brook, an unusually articulate and thoughtful manager and it would be a great shame, were he to appear regularly on our screens next season, to find him restricting himself to neutral observations about the spirit in the camp and the need to move forward.
Holloway has a gift for the game and for communication, and he should use both. He may have said some daftly memorable things in the past, but that is because he will generally try to answer questions honestly and originally, without recourse to off-the-peg excuses or platitudes. His footballing achievement this season, whether Blackpool go up or not, should stand him in good stead for years to come, so there is probably no need to attempt to adopt a new personality. His old one was perfectly likeable, and it keeps coming to the surface anyway.
Since Blackpool switched formation to 4-3-3 they have scored more goals than anyone else in the division, as well as playing entertaining, positive football and taking themselves to the brink of the Premier League. Everyone is happy, though very few managers would have been brave enough to make the change or confident enough to see it through. Holloway did. Why? "Because I was totally fed up with what I was seeing before," he said. "Not just at Blackpool, everywhere. I got sick of teams setting themselves up not to lose a match, or not to concede a goal. One striker up front. I hate that. It's not what football should be about. I think the emphasis should be much more on scoring goals. Not so much that you sacrifice your ability to defend, but you have to give yourself a chance to win a match. Otherwise how can you expect anyone to pay to watch?"
Watch this space. The big green one at Wembley, in the first instance. Even if Blackpool's adventure comes to an end, the story probably won't. And for as long as Holloway is involved, it cannot fail to be interesting.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/may/12/ian-holloway-blackpool-playoffs