[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Blackpool
The Sky Bet Championship
Sunday September 4th - 15:00 ko
at the John McAlpharm Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome Blackpool to Leeds Road on Sunday afternoon for a match put back 24 hours because of the Fee Fi Fo Fums playing on Friday night.

Town have been pretty busy on Transfer Deadline Day, which is quite unusual for us. Through the In Door comes Michał Helik, a Polish international centre back from Barnsley. Another junior centre back, this time from Man City, Luke Mbete. And Tyreece Simpson from Ipswich Town, though he has only come to keep the Physio Room staff busy. 

And through the Out Door goes Rarmani Edmonds-Green to Wigan, Danny Grant to Harrogate and Josh Koroma to Portsmouth, all on loan for the season. Jacob Chapman has also gone off to Salford on loan, just til January. So who will be the sub keeper for this one? We have three keepers out on loan, so I presume it will be the Aussie lad, Nicholas Bilokapic.

Blackpool have lost one of their best players. Josh Bowler has taken his hat and legged it down to the City Ground. The Florists paying around four million for him. They have sent him on loan to Olympiakos. Hmmmm!

The Seasiders brought two players in though on Deadline Day. Callum Wright signed from Leicester and Zak Emmerson from Brighton. Wright is a midfielder who hasn't played in Leicester's first team, but he was a team mate of Will Boyle in two loan spells at Cheltenham. Emmerson is only 18, but spent last season on loan with Blackpool's junior team, scoring a potful of goals.

Earlier in the week, they signed full back Andy Lyons from Shamrock Rovers, who's last game for them saw him scoring in Europe against Ferencvaros.

Sonny Carey is suspended after being sent off against Burnley.

Here's was Town manager Danny Schofield had to say in his press conference this morning.......

A brief history of Blackpool FC: formed in 1887, joining the Lancashire League, then the Football League in 1896. They struggled and failed to gain re-election in 1899. It was only for one season though and in their one season out of the League, they moved into Bloomfield Road.

They stayed in the 2nd Division for the next 30 years, finally gaining promotion as champions in 1929/30, with Jimmy Hampson scoring 45 goals. He spent eleven seasons at the seaside and is still Blackpool's all time leading goal scorer with 252 goals in 373 games. Harry Evans was the manager and he was in charge for the next three seasons in Division One. They only just avoided relegation in the first two, but finished bottom in the third and so went down.

Joe Smith took over the manager's job in 1935 and would remain there until 1958. He got them promoted again in 1937 as runners up to Leicester City and when war broke out in '39, they were top of the league when it was abandoned. During the war, they signed on Stan Mortensen, who had been invalided out of the RAF after the bomber on which he was the wireless operator, crashed leaving him as the only survivor. He was joined shortly after the war by Stanley Matthews, who would go on to supply Stan with crosses for the next few years.

Joe Smith

Blackpool reached the FA Cup Final for the first time in 1948, to play Manchester Utd at Wembley. They led twice through an Eddie Shimwell penalty and then Mortensen put them 2-1 up before half time. The Reds came back in the second half though and won it 4-2.

They made it back again in 1951 to play Newcastle Utd and once more, the two Stanleys were on the losing side as the Magpies won it 2-0 with both coming from geordie legend Jackie Milburn.

However, undeterred, they returned to the FA Cup Final two years later in '53 to play Bolton Wanderers, for what became known as the Matthews Final, one of the most famous matches of the century. Mortensen scored a hat trick for Blackpool and must've been slightly peeved that the media dubbed it the Matthews Final and not the Mortensen Final. Anyway, Bolton scored first through another legend, Nat Lofthouse in the 2nd minute. Mortensen got his first before half time, but Bolton went in 2-1 at half time when Willie Moir put them ahead. They went further ahead in the 55th minute through Eric Bell and then Stan made it 3-2 in the 68th, from a pinpoint Matthews cross. With time running out and Bolton having one hand on the trophy, Mortensen completed his hat trick, direct from a free kick. All waiting for extra time which never came, as Matthews once more dribbled his way down the wing and delivered. His cross missed Mortensen but landed at the feet of Bill Perry who slotted home and the Cup was Blackpool's.

The match was one of the stand out events of a remarkable year in the UK and one of the first to have a massive tv audience as households had bought or rented sets for the Queen's coronation.

The Seasiders went from strength to strength and in '55/56 they finished runners up in the league to Man Utd, their highest ever league finish. They followed that with 4th place and 7th before Smith retired in '58, leaving as Blackpool's most successful manager. Former player Ron Suart took over, finishing 8th in his first season. But for the next few years, they struggled. Matthews was still there, but at the age of 46, he went back to his former club, Stoke City.

They were stuck in mid table obscurity for some time, with a young lad called Alan Ball the star player, before he moved to Everton and World Cup glory in 1966. The following year, Blackpool were relegated and Suart resigned. His replacement was Stan Mortensen. He almost had them promoted as they came over here to play the final game of 67/68 at Leeds Road. They won the match 3-1 but QPR pipped them to the final promotion spot with a last minute winner at Villa Park, which took them up on Goal Average.

They did win promotion two years later as runners up to the magnificent Ian Greaves led Huddersfield Town team, but not with big Stan in charge. He had been controversially sacked and replaced with Les Shannon. Most pleasing for the Tangerine fans was not only winning 3-0 at local rivals Preston on the final day with a Fred Pickering hat trick, but the double joy of relegating the Lillywhites at the same time.

Short lived joy though. They finished bottom and were relegated, with club and country legend, Jimmy Armfield, retiring at the end of the season. It wasn't total despair though. They did win the short lived tournament, the Anglo/Italian Cup, beating Bologna 2-1 in the Final.

They had more despair though in 1978 when they dropped down to the 3rd division for the first time in their history. What's worse is it would take them 29 years to return to the second tier. Stan Ternent became manager, but was replaced by the returning, squeaky voiced, World Cup winning Alan Ball. He couldn't replicate his playing days as a manager and shortly after his departure in 1981, the Tangerine Dream became a nightmare as they were relegated to Division Four.

They had three seasons in the basement, winning promotion as runners up to Chesterfield in 1985. The Board of Directors celebrated promotion by trying to sell Bloomfield Road for supermarket development. However when the council rejected those plans, the white knight saviour came into view and bought the club for £1. A pound! His name was Owen Oyston.

He oversaw the club getting relegated again to Div 4 in 1990. The next season saw them reach their first Play Offs, losing in the Final on penalties to Torquay Utd. Undeterred, they returned to Wembley in the next season to face Scunthorpe Utd. Dave Bamber scored in a 1-1 draw and so it went to penalties again. This time though, they won 4-3, with goalkeeper Steve McIlhargey the hero.

That had been with Billy Ayre in charge. By the time they reached the Play Offs again in '96, Sam Allardyce was the manager. They played Bradford City in the semis, winning 2-0 at the Manningham Tip. It was one of the Play Offs' biggest cock ups in the 2nd leg though as they blew it completely, losing 0-3. Oyston wasn't pleased and Big Sam got the sack.

Oyston was in jail for raping a 16 year old girl though when Gary Megson replaced Sam. By the time he got out, Nigel Worthington and Steve McMahon had been in the manager's hot seat and the club had returned to the 4th division. McMahon got them back up though in 2001, once more through the Play Offs. They beat Leyton Orient 4-2 at the Millennium Stadium with goals from Ian Hughes, who joined Town a couple of years later, Brian Reid, Paul Simpson and Brett Ormerod.

They have good memories of the Welsh national stadium, following up that Play Off win with two FL Trophy wins there. Firstly in 2002, beating Cambridge Utd 4-1 and then in 2004, they beat Southend Utd 2-0.

More Play Off success came in 2007 as the Tangerines ended that 29 year wait for a return to the 2nd division, which was by now known as the Championship. They beat Yeovil Town at the newly re-built Wembley Stadium 2-0. Two players who would later come to Town scored. Robbie Williams scored the first, with Keigan Parker sealing the deal for the club managed by future Town manager, Simon Grayson.

He left after a couple of years in the Championship to join the BellEnders of Beeston. Karl Oyston was by now the Chairman and he brought Ian Holloway in, after Tony Parkes had been caretaker. He got them to the Play Offs again and this time, winning got them to the promised land of the Premier League. They beat Cardiff City at Wembley, with another Town player on the score sheet. It was a 3-2 win with all the goals coming in the first half. Charlie Adam and Gary Taylor-Fletcher had both scored equalisers before Ormerod repeated his heroics of 9 years earlier by scoring the winner in injury time.

That meant they had become the first team to have won the Play Offs of all three divisions, a feat that only Huddersfield Town have matched since. Just like their last stint in the top flight in 1970 though, it was immediate relegation again. They had some good days though, doing the double over Liverpool and on the final day of the season, they were leading at Old Trafford, but lost 2-4 to get relegated.

They made the Play Offs straight away, but this time, after beating Birmingham City in the semis, they lost at Wembley to West Ham Utd. What followed was not nice to watch from an outsider's perspective as they tumbled down the leagues, with mass protests against the Oyston family, most famously on the last day of the 2014/15 season as Lee Clark led them to relegation.

Clark resigned, but the resentment of the Oystons was not dying down and they went down again. They won the Play Offs for a record fifth time in 2017, the day before we beat Reading, by beating Exeter City 2-1 with goals from Bradley Potts and Mark Cullen. Not many Blackpool fans were in attendance though, not wanting any of their money to go to the Oystons.

The fans eventually got what they wanted though in 2019, Simon Sadler becoming the new owner of the club, officially ending the Oystons' 32 years in control. He put Simon Grayson in the manager's job, but this time it didn't work out and he was replaced in 2020 by Neil Critchley. That did work out and at the end of the 20/21 season, they had won the Play Offs for a sixth time. This time it was Lincoln City, who had the fortune of Ollie Turton, in his last game before signing for us, putting the ball in his own goal in the first minute. Two goals from Kenny Dougall though saw the Tangerine Dream (have I used that one already?) realised and they were once more, back in the Championship.

Head to Head



Blackpool lead the head to head with 34 wins to Town's 32, with 23 draws.

Our record league victory was against Blackpool in 1930. That was a 10-1 win, which really came out of the blue. They were bottom of the table, but we had gone seven games without a win. We were still 7th in the First Division table and a crowd of 11,932 turned up to see something that we've never got near since.

George McLean scored four of the goals, Joe Robson got three and Bob Kelly, Jimmy Smailes and Harry Davies got one each. Bill Upton had got an 18th minute equaliser for the Seaside Donkeys to give them a bit of hope, which we soon extinguished.

They were our opponents in 1994 for the Final Whistle at Leeds Road and we were the visitors at Bloomfield Road when this happened.......

Last season, we did the double over them. Sit back and enjoy this and hope that we can do summat similar in this one.........

So what's going on down on the Golden Mile? Managed nowadays by Michael Appleton, the ex Both Ends and Baggies midfielder.

He was born in Salford in 1975 and started out as a youth with Man Utd. From there he had loans out at Wimbledon, Lincoln and Grimsby. Preston paid half a million for him, then West Brom paid three quarters of a million for him, but a knee injury forced him to quit at only 27 years old.

He then got into coaching at the Hawthorns, having five years with the youth team. When Roberto Di Matteo got sacked, Appleton had one game as caretaker, a 3-3 draw with West Ham.

He then got the job of manager at Portsmouth, but when they went into administration, he left the frying pan and jumped into the fire by signing on as manager of Blackpool. The Oystons were in charge and Blackpool wasn't the best place to be, so after eleven games in charge, he jumped ship again, this time going to Blackburn.

A sucker for a hopeless job, he was employed by the Venky's chicken plucking empire now and his managerial stint was over before it got going, lasting just a couple of days longer than he had at Blackpool.

So he went to work for another dodgy club, Oxford and Robert Maxwell. Only kidding. Maxwell was long gone by then and Oxford were doing alright. So much so that he got them promoted to League One and got them to Wembley for the Trophy Final where they got beaten by Barnsley. That was the one won by an Adam Hammill worldie.

He got them back there again twelve months later, pitting his wits against Mark Robins and his Coventry lot. Robins came out on top and still Appleton didn't have a trophy to show for.

In 2017, he went to Leicester as assistant to Craig Shakespeare. Then back to the Baggies in a similar role, which was then followed by getting the top job at Lincoln City when Danny Cowley and his kid brother left to join us.

In June this year, he returned to Blackpool, a much more sensibly balanced club now, to replace Neil Critchley after he left to go as no 2 to Steven Gerrard at the Villa.

Blackpool in popular culture: It's a quiet little town on the west coast of England. Nothing much ever happens there.









Recent form - last 6 matches:

Bristol C 2-0 Town
Town 2-2 WBA
Norwich 2-1 Town
Town 3-1 Stoke
Town 1-4 PNE (EFL Cup)
Birmingham 2-1 Town

Blackpool 0-1 Blackburn
Blackpool 3-3 Bristol C
Burnley 3-3 Burnley
QPR 0-1 Blackpool
Blackpool 0-1 Swansea
Blackpool 0-0 Barrow (EFL Cup) Lost on pens

Town are 23rd in the Championship table with 4 points. Blackpool are 15th with 8.



Leading scorers:

Terriers:
Faustino Anjorin (2)
Jordan Rhodes (2)
Danny Ward (2)

Tangerines:
Theo Corbeanu (2)
Jerry Yates (2)
Josh Bowler (2)





September the 4th down the ages: How did we get on in previous matches played on this date?

1915: Barnsley (h) Wartime League, WON 2-1 (Ernie Islip, Jack Cooper og)
1920: Preston NE (h) Div 1, WON 1-0 (Frank Mann pen)
1922: Nottingham Forest (a) Div 1, WON 1-0 (Joe Walter)
1923: Preston NE (h) Div 1, WON 4-0 (Billy Smith, Charlie Wilson 2, Clem Stephenson)
1926: Birmingham (h) Div 1, lost 0-2
1929: Liverpool (a) Div 1, lost 0-3
1933: Chelsea (h) Div 1, WON 6-1 (Dave Mangnall, Charlie Luke, Wilf Bott, George McLean 2, Austen Campbell)
1937: Brentford (a) Div 1, lost 0-2
1943: Bradford PA (a) Wartime League, WON 2-1 (Willie Watson, Bobby Barclay)
1946: Sunderland (a) Div 1, lost 0-3
1948: Manchester Utd (a) Div 1, lost 1-4 (Peter Doherty)
1954: Bolton Wanderers (h) Div 1, WON 2-0 (Vic Metcalfe, Tommy Cavanagh)
1957: Liverpool (h) Div 2, WON 2-1 (Stan Howard 2)
1965: Bristol City (a) Div 2, lost 1-2 (Jimmy Nicholson)
1967: Blackpool (a) Div 2, lost 0-2
1971: Southampton (a) Div 1, WON 2-1 (Les Chapman, Jimmy Lawson)
1976: Newport County (a) Div 4, drew 1-1 (Franny Firth)
1979: Grimsby Town (h) League Cup, lost 1-4 (Ian Holmes pen)
1982: Wrexham (a) Div 3, drew 1-1 (Phil Bater og)
1984: Blackburn Rovers (h) Div 2, drew 1-1 (Dale Tempest)
1990: Bolton Wanderers (a) League Cup, lost 1-2 (Kieran O'Regan)
1991: Chester City (h) Div 3, WON 2-0 (Iffy Onuora, Gary Barnett)
1993: Brighton & HA (a) Division Two (3rd tier), drew 2-2 (Mark Wells, Iffy Onuora)
2007: Grimsby Town (a) FL Trophy, lost 1-4 (Michael Collins)
2010: AFC Bournemouth (h) League One (3rd tier), drew 2-2 (Antony Kay, Gary Roberts pen)

Played 25, WON 10, drew 5, lost 10.

[theo_luddite]

Oh look - West Brom have just given away a dodgy penalty - well that makes a change.

Back to our game, I see you're still perched on the back fence Snoots.
Hope you managed to get the splinters out without too much trouble.

Think we stood on the open end for that last game too. I know we had a nostalgic stroll across the pitch after the game, as pitch invasions were allowed then at full time after the lap-of-honour. I was surprised how little grass there was on the lush parts of the pitch, never mind the band down the middle where it hadn't grown beyond September for a lifetime. The pitch invasion at Blackpool at half-time that got the game abandoned was just bloody stupid, even if it eventually got the result their fans wanted.

I also misread your YouTube Video of Blackpool Prom from 1900 as 1990 - though I doubt much would have changed to be fair other than the cost of a Kiss-me-Kwik hat, a stick of rock, a now plastic dish of fish and chips instead of yesterdays newspaper and you couldn't use old pennies in the slot machines anymore.

[jjamez]

Notice carlos' olympiakos have also signed real Madrid reject Marcelo... Mustn't have fancied Nottingham

[Lord Snooty]

Connor Mahoney played for the BTeam today. Scored a hat trick. Two of them going in direct from corners kicks.

Playing today probably means he won't be in the squad tomorrow, but after scoring three he might well be.

Three nil win at Boro and a clean sheet for Bilokopic.

[Lord Snooty]

Philips scored on his Morecambe debut.

Koroma had an assist for the Pompey winner against Pish.

[jjamez]

Nice to see the florists throw a two goal lead away despite all their signings and triple decker team bus...Phil bil being one of the cherry scorers

[Lord Snooty]

Ward and KKH start. Rhodes and Ruffels drop to the bench.
Helik on bench. No Mbete.

[theo_luddite]

Apparently denied a perfectly good goal by a ref with a dodgy watch. Whatever next?

That apart we had most of the possession and next to bugger all shots to trouble their keeper worth mentioning.

[Lord Snooty]

Not the best performance ever, but we're not as bad as some are making out. Not adequately replacing O'Brien and Toffolo has disjointed things and Danny is tinkering with the line up too much to try and answer this problem. Starting with Turton on the left was baffling, even though he was one of the best players.

Hogg in a back three isn't a great idea, I don't think. Carlos tried it and got away with it, but we miss him in midfield. He looked like he could be out for a while by the way he walked off. Hope not.

KKH didn't look comfortable and their left wing back had him beaten all ends up. He did the same to Sorba when he switched wings. Pat Jones though. Get this lad up to speed and see if we can get a start out of him. He's awesome.

People saying Sorba was out of place on the left, but his crosses coming in were perfect. Not his fault if the only one in there is the only one in there. Get some more players in the box. You know the ball will get there.

Blackpool worked hard and waited for their chances. A great away performance for them. No complaints about them. They took the chance when it came and I think only had one other clear chance.

What I do have a problem with, is the technology. Everybody knows the ball was over the line. The liner knows the ball is over the line, but he can't stick his flag up. The ref has control over that decision. If his watch don't buzz. He can't give it.

[theo_luddite]

Shouldn't they all have the same watches?