Blackpool FansNetwork Blogs

pause for breath
Even by our standards, the last week or so has been momentous for Blackpool FC. It all kicked off in the High Court - where too much of our future has been determined in the last two years.

Unity
So Christmas came and went and for many the lasting memory will be of Valeri Belokon breaking a long, self-imposed silence to send we supporters festive greetings.

Trust
It’s said you reap what you sow, and looking at the state of the relationship between Blackpool FC’s owners and the fans it’s a statement that certainly rings true. The setting up of the ‘fans parliament’ is just such an example of how any trust between the owners of the club and the fans has diminished or in most cases absolutely disappeared. How, in fact, can you trust a man to control a football club who doesn’t have the ability to control himself? Therefore how can you trust that same person to choose people of varying views, some which may hurt, to populate that parliament?

Dream Stealers.
A number of good Blackpool fans have been, and still are, embroiled in ugly legal threats devised by dream stealers who, it would appear, have little better to do than to seek apologies and compensation from the erstwhile individuals who have had the temerity to upset them, instead of concentrating on the job in hand, that of running a successful football team, have a happy and growing fan base and be held in high esteem.

Please go, and go now.
I’m presently having a bout of amnesia and deja vous in parallel. The problem is, I have heard it all before, statements such as ‘lessons have to be learned’ roll of the tongue of a mouthpiece for the odious family that still taunt and sue the fans of Blackpool FC and laugh at the complete and utter dis-interest of both the FA and the FL.

Lee Clark - the half term report
For Lee Clark, we are more or less half way through the task he was given at the end of October, and it seems a good moment to have a look at how he is actually doing.

The ignorant mind.
The ignorant mind, it is said, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion. (Bodhi dharma).

The Bad, The Good and the Ugly.
Forward:

Remembering the 56 and its effects.
A recent feature on the Bradford fire disaster in the Observer newspaper stirred up a predictably powerful reaction among fans of the Bantams, and rightly so. It was the worst fire disaster in the history of English football which occurred during a league match on Saturday, 11 May 1985, killing 56 and injuring at least 265. It was meant to be a day of celebration, City having won the 3rd Division title and being presented with the said trophy, but turned into a day of nightmares, consternation and horror witnessed by a full stadium of spectators and millions watching on television.

Success and Failure, You decide why.
Henry Ford once said, ‘If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself’. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to have been the case at Bloomfield Road for a long time now. Instead, it appears that successive managers have been pulling in one direction whilst the Oystons have been blocking their moves or pulling in the opposite direction, making their job if not untenable certainly a thankless task.

will Christmas come early?
It's been a strange couple of weeks, if you are a Blackpool fan. Firstly, we got the much anticipated but equally much delayed departure of Jose Riga ; the uncharacteristically swift appointment of a replacement ; and then two games that could hardly have contrasted more had they tried.

Lions lead by Donkies (Asses)
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the poor leadership of the British Tommies of WW1 and to blame the generals who instructed them. The contention is that the brave soldiers (lions) were sent to their deaths by incompetent, foolish and indifferent leaders (donkeys). In my analogy I must include in the Lions, the Subalterns (The junior Officers who lead from the front) only to be picked out by the German gunners as first to die. Subaltern casualty/mortality rates were catastrophically high during WWI and estimates for the mortality rates range from 65 to 81%. This was, at its lowest estimate, double the rate for enlisted men. The remark, however, goes back a lot further than Alan Clark who in his book ‘the Donkeys, coined the phrase. It appears to have actually come from an ancient Arabic proverb which says "An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep". Also, during the Crimean War a letter was reportedly sent home by a British soldier quoting a Russian officer who had said that British soldiers were ‘Lions commanded by Asses'

What future for the fans? The true face of BFC.
Why do increasing numbers not want to go to Bloomfield Road anymore, is it because the club is dying? It's a question those leaving are more than ready to answer. The problem is, those who hold the purse strings are not listening to the peaceful but increasingly noisy protests of the fans, and a lot of the remonstrations are about a fair crack of the whip i.e. the money gained from our Premier League sojourn and that, of course, is the problem.

How lucky we were.
Ian Holloway often used to exclaim ‘how lucky we are’ and then go on to explain why he felt he and the supporters of Blackpool Football Club were lucky. So all things being even, I thought I would use a similar metaphor to start this blog.

one fifth of the way in
Nine league games in and our season shows no real sign of picking up. A lot has been made in the last fortnight of the better performances we have been seeing since the first international break. We are undeniably playing better, and can say with some justification that we are probably not getting the rub of the green. But the stark fact is that this perceived improvement has yielded two points and one goal in four games. Whichever way you look at those statistics, they clearly don't give much cause for optimism.

Shameful
It was Saturday morning, school had finished for the week and there was a football match to go and watch. Dad was having a bath, unusually his second one this week, and changing his underwear for the third time this week, Mum suggested he was getting rather posh changing so often and wondered whether the fact that she had finally got rid of the Burco boiler, wash board and Posser and replaced it with the latest Hoover washing machine with attached mangle had anything to do with this new era of cleanliness.

The Horsemen of the Apocolypse.
In my previous blog, the second of a trilogy, I referred to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and I thought, for the uninitiated I would expand on that theme in order to make some sort of sense out of my statement. I state here and now I don’t study the Bible and am not particularly religious, but where the cap fits.

The Folly of Denegrating your fanbase.
Gerald Irving Ratner (born 1949, London) is a British businessman and motivational speaker. He was formerly chief executive of the major British jewellery company Ratner’s Group (now the Signet Group). He achieved notoriety after making a speech in which he jokingly denigrated the company's products, which caused the company's near collapse (the so-called "Ratner effect").

Not my fault? Are you sure?
The ongoing exasperation and indignation of the BFC fans shows no signs of ending following a summer of silence and then the usual broken promises and vacuous statements coming from the family spokesman in charge at Bloomfield Road. This has been followed up with what appears to be a regular column in the Blackpool Gazette, which began by blaming every person for the debacle of Nottingham Forest on everyone but himself. It is basically like a script from the Simpsons.

IN PRAISE OF…. BRETT ORMEROD
We live nowadays in a world where superstars are hyped up to the eyeballs by the media, portrayed as other worldly beings who are somehow different from, and remote from the rest of us. And of course, they need to be photogenic as well. That goes without saying.