Tangerine dream

When somewhat forgotten Ian Holloway took Blackpool over this summer, few people believed that this charismatic motivator will do anything more than traditional and boring survival fight. The team from English popular summer resort on Lancashire coast have been in financial problems for a long time now and in the last few seasons they struggled to make the team for the Championship…

At the peak of the season, when the games are played on Tuesday-Saturday pace and when some regular starters are bound to get injured, panic usually strikes at Bloomfield Road about where to find eleven players to go out on the pitch. The club were after the youngsters from other clubs to bring on a month-long or three-month loan and Christmas usually sees them playing with most of the players that didn’t even start the season in orange jersey.

Something finally changed this summer.

They sold the players that had to be sold as well as the expensive ones (captain and key defender Shaun Barker went to Derby). In return they kept the promising players (young midfielder Gary Taylor-Fletcher, Ben Burges) and surprisingly signed a very famous player (midfielder Charlie Adam from Glasgow Rangers), then a talented striker Billy Clarke from Ipswich. When you add to it fine players, the last-minute loans (striker Hameur Bouazza, winger Al Banghoura, defender Marcel Seip), we see a pretty good squad at Holloway’s disposal.

Charismatic manager Ollie didn’t have luck on the bench in Leicester, where he suffered the biggest failure in the history of the club after relegation to League One in season 2007/08. He paid for it by resigning and took a year-long break. Now he seems to be returning in style, as Blackpool are doing great, especially at home where in the last six rounds we saw them bury names like Wigan (4:1 in Carling Cup), then Newcastle, Sheffield United, Coventry, Peterborough and Plymouth in the league. They conceded only two goals in all of these matches.

The game against Plymouth was marked by French defender, Marcel Seip’s persuasive debut, who was literally chased away from Plymouth only few days earlier because of his clash with coach Paul Sturrock. He was sent on loan to Blackpool with the permission to play against his parent club. Few days later these rivals met and Seip’s beautiful goal helped Blackpool to a win and he enjoyed the sweet revenge.
The situation with Seip these days is especially interesting. Blackpool and Plymouth presidents are negotiating about extending his loan contract and the problem that got in the way is to say the least, bizarre. Actually, Seip’s wife is the daughter of Plymouth president, Paul Stapleton. She and her mother, the daughter and wife of Plymouth’s president were seen celebrating Seip’s goal for Blackpool in the afore mentioned win over Plymouth. A silly situation that seems to have affected Stapleton, so he hesitates about the loan now…

Ollie is a great motivator and his work on the West coast, reminds of his days in West London, when he did a great job on QPR bench, while Rangers were still a modest team. Tangerines are doing great so far, in the play-offs zone or near it, showing another important feature they didn’t have before – excellent defense (they conceded only two goals in seven home matches, 13 overall). Even though it is still early to talk about play-offs contention, if they keep this up anything can happen.

Dreams can come true and last season Burnley showed that anything is possible when you believe.

Popularity: 6% [?]