Gearing Up For The New Season

I haven't write about the world of sport for a while now, not since that wonderful day down at Wembley, mainly because bugger all's happened at Blackpool since then.

We've yet to make our first signing of the summer although we do seem to be close to a couple at the moment and its always difficult to know what's going on behind the scenes. What I will say is this, I really wish the sudden explosion of new Blackpool fans would shut their mouths on subjects they don't have the first clue about, its really irritating.

I understand that any club that gets to the hallowed ground of the Premiership is going to pick up quite a lot of new 'supporters' and that's fine seeing as we need people through the turnstiles to pay the bills, but I'm worried about the impact they might have if things start going badly, which is a very real risk.

I'm not being pessimistic, ask any long term Blackpool fan and they'll likely tell you the same thing, we'll fight tooth and nail to stay up, but we know this is punching way above our weight and so if we go straight back down there'll be no hard feelings and we'll enjoy our one season at the top. We're a tiny club with a minuscule budget who should be struggling in the Championship, we're just grateful to have one shot at the big time.

But some of these new 'fans' won't understand that, if we start having heavy defeats against the big teams then I fear they might start getting on the team's back and boo, that would be the worst outcome. And my worries haven't been eased by some of the talk I've heard from people who didn't previously had any interest in Blackpool.

I've heard people complain about the lack of big money signings, at the kind of players we're trying to get in, and even at Holloway himself. You have to understand, we need to invest in our club as well as players, get the training and other facilities up to scratch so we're better placed for the future. We don't have massive sums of money to give to players without risking the future. The kind of players we want to bring in are those that fit in the squad. We didn't do well last season because we had the best players, far from it, individually there were a lot of better teams around. We did well because we had the best team, a bunch of lads who knew how they wanted to play and did it week in week out. You can't turn your back on that now just because you're in the Premiership. If we go down, I want us to go down the right way, playing attractive attacking football.

And as for the last one. Anyone questioning Holloway deserves slapping. He's earnt himself at least one summer of doing as he pleases and to see if he can work his magic again.