‘Pool Battered Away AGAIN!

Blackpool travelled to Plymouth knowing that a win would definitely ensure survival in The Championship for another year, but were without key players in Gary Taylor-Fletcher and Stephen Crainey for the game at Home Park.

So, without the left back and right winger, Simon Grayson set out a side with Gorkss filling in the vacant LB spot, Stuart Green on the right, and The Seasiders lined up:

Rachubka
Barker – Evatt – Jackson – Gorkss
Green – Southern – Jorgensen – Hoolahan
Dickov – McPhee

Subs: Flinders, Coid, Martin, Burgess, Morrell

What followed was 90 minutes of hell. I confess that the radio was turned off at 3-0. Simon Grayson’s side looked as if they were ‘on the beach’ as one forum member stated late last night after driving 600 miles in a day to watch the team capitulate in front of some fairly average players: Rory Fallon has never been a world beater, Jermaine Easter is still finding his feet in this division and Luke Summerfield the?erm? who?! Having said that, they made light work of a shoddy back four and led after just four minutes as Easter jogged (or so it looked!) past Jackson to slot home the opener.

20 minutes later the points were safe for The Pilgrims as a Summerfield corner was headed home unmarked by Fallon. Why have we been so poor at set pieces all season? I thought that we would have a better chance of defending them with Jackson’s organisation in there – obviously not!

At the break it was 2-0. Why worry though, Leicester will bail us out against Sheffield Wednesday! That sounded like the blasé attitude of the players and indeed the manager, as he failed to make a single substitution at half time – some may have argued he didn’t want to win the game.

It took a third goal to spring the manager into action; another set piece was whipped in by Summerfield and found Rory Fallon again, and the New Zealander made Gorkss look a bit lost in truth as he scored the final goal of the game.

With half an hour left, Burgess and Morrell were brought on for the two players who came into the team, Green and Jackson as we attempted to press for goals. The goals never came, and the game finished 3-0, with Blackpool having just three shots on goal all game – pathetic!

Oh, Leicester failed to bail us out by beating Wednesday; Ian Holloway’s men lost 3-1 and missed a penalty. Southampton play West Brom live on Sky tomorrow evening – if they win, it could well be Blackpool that follow Colchester and Scunthorpe into League One. Grayson stated to the press after the game that ‘You can’t get away from the fact that if Southampton don’t beat West Brom then we are safe, so we will be hoping West Brom win it’ but the bare truth is that we should be safe by now, and if indeed results to conspire against us – just like in 1978 – we will only have ourselves to blame.