A squad of 8 players, a breakdown in communications between manager and chairman and all just a few weeks before the season starts isn’t exactly how Blackpool fans imagined the transfer window would go, particularly after new boss Jose Riga taking over sparked the idea of a ‘Riga Revolution’.
1 new signing (2 if you count McMahon ) can hardly be considered a revolution. As much as Jose Riga wants to bring in new players, Karl Oyston simply won’t fund the money to purchase them. How on earth is a manager supposed to do his job if a chairman won’t back him?
Rumours Riga is set to quit Blackpool have been ongoing for a while now, with the Daily Mail amongst other well known newspapers reporting that Riga was set to quit the club after a transfer standoff. However, the Blackpool Gazette reports that Riga had crisis talks with chairman Karl Oyston and has handed him a list of players he wants to add to the squad, hopefully there will be some kind of breakthrough in the next week.
Pool are going to have to sign a lot of players very soon if they are going to assemble a full squad for the start of the season, but realistically this is looking rather unlikely. After being in a similar situation last year I and many other fans would have hoped Oyston would have learnt from his mistakes. Whilst he has never been a ‘big spender’, surely he must realise that having to assemble a new squad at the start of every season is far from ideal.
Fan unsatisfaction grew to a whole new level at the end of last season with the club only just managing to survive in the division. It now appears that fans are even more unsatisfied with how the club is being run, and who can blame them?
News that young defender Harrison McGahey has departed to Sheffield United, a team in the division lower than Blackpool, is also frustrating. With so little players in the squad I’d have at least thought the club would do everything in their power to keep their best young prospect amongst their ranks.
The club have managed to go from challenging the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United in the premier league to having a heavily depleted squad and looking destined for relegation from the championship, and all in the space of a few years.
‘The club is certainly in a crisis, whether they can get out of this current situation I’m not sure. It seems as long as the club is being run the way it is, these problems will continue to persist.
looks like chaos from the outside, hopefully he sees sense and gets buying you the players you need to compete!