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.

I’m obviously on, partly, about this year’s April Fool’s gag, at least that’s what it appears to be because we’ve heard it so often before and we are meant to believe it. Come to think of it perhaps we are coming up to the time of the year when the baying crowd need softening up a little so that a few more season tickets can be sold when the time comes and a few more pennies can drop into someone’s grasping hands. Lessons will no doubt have been learned and a proper start to the season will be expected after a full pre-season tour.

Where the tour will be is anyone’s guess, last year it was to Penrith. Now I have nothing against Penrith, in fact it is quite a decent little town, but to have your one and only pre-season game as your tour there is a bit rich. Add to that the line-up, trialist after trialist after trialist and it explains why the envy of the Football League suddenly became the Laughing stock of the Football league. It begins to explain why the club found itself in difficulty from day one of the campaign, when players who should have been in the team or on the bench were not even registered.

Now we are sent back from where we came, to coin a phrase. The spectre of League one football has been confirmed. In some ways it is a relief for the condemned to know their fate, but it is a tragedy of titanic proportions that appears to have been engineered from poor judgement and pure spite. Could it be that William Shakespeare was right when he penned – ‘Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.’ The devils in our case being the owners of our club and until they are exorcised, I have no doubt that the continued fall from the pinnacle of success will continue.

The fact that we have been relegated is disastrous, but the length of time we remain down is important if we are to ever see a Blackpool team in the higher echelons again, certainly during my lifetime and the lifetime of a lot of older supporters. Supporters who have been through this all before in the 1980’s, supporters who have bled tangerine but are now so disenchanted with the miserly way in which the club is perceived to be run. Then there are the so called glory hunters, but truthfully a new breed of fan who have swelled the numbers at the ground and shown what can happen with a winning team, mostly gone maybe never to return. The youngsters who have been brought up on Manchester United, Chelsea etc via SKY television but who had never experienced the joy of a match day experience along with tangerine shirts blossoming around the area. What has happened to them? If, by some miracle, we are able to grace the upper leagues again, will they be back, or will it just be a case of ‘seen it all before, I want an instant fix’. However the worrying part is if we remain in the 1st division or even worse go down again, our fan base for the future will have been lost, if it has not already been lost.

To quote the bard again, ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool’. I feel this quote adequately sums up the position we find ourselves in. We appear to have a fool at the helm, a fool who has become mute since his transgressions in text messages were revealed. This lack of any sort of communication from him or from his elderly in denial father has, rather than calming the situation, made things a whole lot worse.

I taught Health and Safety for many years and the one thing I couldn’t get across enough was the fact that communication was the most important element in any business, club, team et al. This applies throughout, and not just to Health & Safety. Communication comes in all sorts of forms, through general speech whether this be one to one or even one to one hundred, body language and of course through the written word. From the initial communication there will be feedback, not always positive, and this gives the communicator the chance to way up his/her options. Clubs tend to communicate through meetings as well as through direct messaging and get togethers, formal or informal. Be warned, any club that doesn’t communicate is on the rocky road to oblivion as people who rely or look forward to the next words of wisdom to come from above or the next meeting, become agitated and contemptuous of the person supposed to make those disseminations. That lesson appears not to matter to some, and thus we find ourselves in our unforgiveable position. A position that seems to have been purposely engineered or at least a position that has come about due to crass bad management.

My plea is for the Oystons to take stock of their situation and realise that they have passed the point of no return, where relations between themselves and their customers (the fans) have been damaged beyond repair, Put the club up for sale and go and look after their other business interests. They are not wanted at Bloomfield Road and neither will they or their family ever be, after what they’ve done.

What then? It doesn’t matter to me if the new incumbent is not a Champagne Charlie, as empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. So long as the new owner has that big heart we will see Blackpool rise again starting at fan level and I for one look forward to that day.

BertandErnie added 18:01 - May 25 Curryman - that really is an excellent piece. Well done.
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