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.

Lee Clark's first experience of his new squad in action must have been a chastening one, to say the least. The home defeat to Ipswich was one of the most abject in recent times, not just because of the result, but more the inept, clumsy way that we stumbled to it.

His response has been commendably swift, with new blood brought in immediately. One of the new players, Jacob Murphy, made a very good start to his Blackpool career in the 2-2 draw with Fulham, scoring a well-worked goal and generally impressing with his pace and his ability to link with Ishmael Miller. It will be good to see more of that. Whist losing two points was disappointing, most of the sizeable Seaside contingent will have left Craven Cottage thinking that this was much more like us, and more of what we have grown to expect over the last eight years or so.

Two thoughts spring from all this. The fixture list between now and Christmas gives us a realistic chance to make inroads on the gap to safety, if we see more performances like we did on Bonfire Night. Bournemouth will be a very tough nut to crack, but games with Leeds, Bolton, Rotherham (twice), Birmingham, Charlton and an out of form Sheffield Wednesday do look a lot easier than they might have been.

Obviously some stiffer looking tests await after Christmas, but for now the job we face is to instil some self-belief into the players and the place as a whole. It is not as if we haven't managed to do this before - many of our fans will remember the 1992/93 season, the first back in the third tier under Billy Ayre. Then, a mid-December defeat at Wigan left us on eleven points, and eleven from safety. After a couple of scratchy home draws, we went to Sealand Road and claimed our first away win in nearly a year. The rest is history, as we played like play-off contenders to climb away from danger. It was almost as though confidence and belief had been turned on like a tap.

My second thought is that beyond these next few games, January is always a big month for most clubs, and will be a better chance for Clark to change what he has inherited. I was not in the least surprised to see that he was able to bring in new players where his predecessor seemingly could not. To me, it was partly about Clark's proactivity, but also the chairman's willingness to back him and his judgement.

Riga still retains a groundswell of popularity with some of our support, but the stark fact is that he did not enjoy the confidence of the chairman and was thus unlikely to ever change things markedly for the better. Why this was so has been done to death many times, and there are a lot of unanswered questions for both the Riga camp and Karl Oyston - questions that may never be satisfactorily answered. I wanted Riga to have a reasonable chance, but to my mind he did little to help his own cause in the last few weeks.

I don't think pining after him like love-sick teenagers does our support any credit either. He's gone now, and what should really matter to us all is that the club moves forward. That does of course require a lot more evidence of learning from his mistakes, and a bit of overdue humility from the chairman, although I must say like most I hope for that rather than expecting it.

It also means that we need to back the new man, and remember that the real enemies of the club lie outside the gates. It would be good to reel a few of them in over the next few games, and put some of them under real pressure. Fighting amongst ourselves is merely a distraction from this essential business, and I hope to see us doing far less of it from mow on.

seasider13 added 18:25 - Nov 7 Those are interesting games coming up against fellow strugglers, what a fantastic opportunity to close the gap if Lee Clark can get this team playing like we know they can. As for the in-fighting that only seems to stop with success on the pitch, whenever a team (any team) gets dragged into back to back relegation scraps, the knives are out for Chairman and Managers.

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crewcut added 19:06 - Nov 7 Interesting times ahead as ever for Bfc fans. Its never dull. If Clark can do what he did at Huddersfield in the early days and recapture his own football destiny maybe Pool can still do something good this season.
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dazbaz70 added 14:00 - Nov 12 So, are you guys realistically thinking that the current squad has anywhere near enough quality in it to close the gap in pointss or are you just burying your head in the sand. Look at the results over the last 2 years, truly shocking. If the Ipswich game was anything to go by then we won't even be entertained in defeat. As for if Lee Clark can recature blah blah, 2 seasons at Brum with much better players is abigger clue as to his management skilss. Don't get me wrong, I m not wishing him to fail, far from it, just expect it, The idiot who holds the purse strings is the one responsible for the decline of our club. Im pretty sure that there is no-one left who actively supports the chairman., except for wind up purposes.

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