Ollie: I Let Myself Down

I don’t know about you, but I was pleased (and amused!) to see Ian Holloway take the stand that he did against Ipswich’s and the officials’ poor behaviour on Saturday.

However, the Blackpool manager reflected upon his dismissal to the stands by saying:

‘I let myself down, but my players didn’t let me down.’

Despite those feelings however, Ollie still criticised the referee (whom he waited to see for nearly an hour after the game) heavily in his post-match interview:

‘The first one [red card] I felt was unbelievably harsh because Ian Evatt has played the ball,’ he said.

‘[For the second red card] Rob didn’t touch him. He tripped his heels together as Jon Walters went across him. So all of a sudden we’ve gone down to nine men and I am obviously going to be a little bit upset.

‘If I can’t talk in the same manner as Roy Keane did to the fourth official then I don’t think I am being properly treated in my home ground.

‘The fourth official deemed me to be unacceptably overly-aggressive towards him and how I spoke to him, in a foul and abusive way. That is not a nice thing to hear. He wrote down what he thought I said and isn’t it funny that it wasn’t actually what I said at all. I don’t consider what I said, even now, to be abusive at all. I thought it was factual.’

As per usual though, Ollie saw the one bright chink of light at the end of the tunnel; that ‘Pool’s elimination from the competition leaves them to concentrate on the league:

‘I would have loved a cup run but I’m delighted it wasn’t the league. Were we going to win the FA Cup? Probably not, I wouldn’t have minded a run in it, and I felt that we’d done more than enough, even with nine men, to actually get a draw.’

With only one centre half available for Saturday’s game away at Cardiff (where are all those people that said we didn’t need another centre half now?!), Ollie admits that we’ll be up against it:

‘Considering we’ve only got one other one left [a centre half], Alex Baptiste, then the old proverbial could be hitting the fan. But we’ll have a go and we’ll see what we can do.’

Newspaper reports suggest that Ollie could be tempted to dip his toe into the loan market before Saturday to strengthen the centre back position, although others have suggested that he may simply recall youngster Ash Eastham from his loan spell at Cheltenham.