Category: Matt Phillips

Bristol City v Pool

It’s Micheal Appleton’s first away match in charge and a first chance for me to see Appleton’s Pool.

Bristol have had a poor start to the season and prop up the Championship with 11 points.

There will be changes to the starting line up with GTF out with a hamstring tear and Matty Phillips out till the new year with a toe injury. I would expect the Fonze to start upfront and maybe Dicko on the wing.

It will be interesting to see if we go slighly more denfensive compared to our away tactics in previous years which has been attacking / counter attack.

Ticket, beer and train.

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Hull 2 – 3 Pool – Back to winning ways!

What crisis? A fantastic 3-2 win tonight over Hull. As expected Eardley started ahead of Broadfoot who had a knock, in midfield it was back to Gomes, Ferguson and Osbourne. A combination is which could be our strongest? Upfront, and most importantly Gary Taylor-Fletcher was back replacing Kevin Phillips.

I wasn’t at the match and without commentary it’s hard to tell how it went. It sounds like we again let in to soft goals but managed to score more, something we often do!

It all started to well with Maty Phillips grabbing the opener, but we then conceded just before and after the break. Recently we’ve let in a load of goals just either side of the break.

It required two subs to grabs the goals, Kevin Phillips knocked in the equaliser from close range, his first of the season and then Nouha Dicko with the winner! It sounds like an over head kick / volley! Two inspired subs from Ollie!

Nouha Dicko

So back to winning ways, maybe not a complete performance but enough to give us three points and put confidence back into the squad with the visit of Charlton on Saturday who went down to a 2-1 defeat at home to Watford tonight.

Right time to …. D. I . C. K. O!

Transfer Deadline – Blackpool FC

It’s tomorrow, a lot might happen, nothing much could happen but if something does happen it’s going to involve one of the below.

Matt Phillips

As we know Phillips handed in a transfer request the day before the opening of the season. Interest has come from Cardiff in the past, however they have signed Noone from Brighton and look to be signing Maynard from West Ham. Swansea have also shown interest, and with Scott Sinclair possible going to Manchester City there is a slot, but the Swans have signed Pablo Hernandez a winger from Spain today so might have filled the gap already.

Oyston and Ollie have both stated there’s no need to sell Phillips, and he’ll be staying

Verdict: Stay

Tom Ince

A super start to the season and lots of interest from various clubs, however his Dad wants him to stay and Tom has said the same. Not much chance of a move unless some crazy money is offered. Some offers might have come in.

Verdict: Stay

DJ Campbell

DJ could be back for a third spell at the club he’s not going to feature at QPR, Huddersfield and Bristol City are interested. Coming back to the Pool doesn’t look on the cards as DJ is apparently looking for similar wages to his last spell e.g. Premier League wages. It’s unlikely he’ll be biting at Blackpool badge anytime soon.

Verdict: Going to another Championship Club

Charlie Adam

Brendan Rodgers doesn’t look like he wants Charlie Adam,  a possible move back to the seaside could be on, however it would look like a step back for the midfielder and no chance of keeping the same wage. He was at Bloomfield Road last weekend watching the win over Ipswich. However a £4 deal to Stoke looks on the cards.

Verdict: Going to Stoke to play long balls

Stephen Dobbie

Apparently fees have been agreed, but wages were a problem, Celtic and Middlesbrough are also interested parties. We’ve had a few instances of signing players after great loan spells Wes, Charlie, DJ and Dobbie could be another depending on his flexibility on wages.  The possible departure of Scott Sinclair could also have a knock-on effect.

Verdict: Moving on but loan again? Maybe to Bloomfield Road.

Any more? Stick any in a comment below

Blackpool 6 – 0 Ipswich

And so we continue, three wins in three, top the league and a goal difference of nine already. Ollie rewarded the started 11 from Tuesday’s win over Leeds with another start and despite looking a little tired they did the job easing us into a two nil league before the break.

The first a not so unfortunate own goal came from a poor header from the Ipswich centre half allowing Thomas to cross in to the area where the young Cresswell put into his own net. I think the young centre half was preoccupied with the lurking KP behind him and made a real hash of an attempted clearance.

Ince was back down the left wing before the end of the half and crossed to the ever impressive, ever reliable Gary Taylor Fletcher who smashed the ball home into the roof of the net with a side footed volley.

The first half wasn’t all plain sailing, ex-Seasider Jay Emmanuel-Thomas threatened on both wings and forced Gilks into save at his near post after out jumping Crainey while it was still 0-0. The Tractor boys did look lively in the first half, being first to the ball often and a having a good amount of possession.

After break we really moved up a gear and in truth the away side weren’t able to get near us as we went onto add another 4. Ince twisted and turned in the box to grab his first of the afternoon slotting into the far corned.

10 minutes later the 3rd came, Ince again placed the ball in the far corner of the goal from the corner of the box after some nice play down the wing and in the box from GTF.

For the fifth Ince was involved again taking a short corner and crossing to Craig Cathcart who headed in for his second goal at the club, he nearly grabbed another later heading onto the post.

For the last goal Tom Ince wasn’t involved, Matt Phillips who come on as a sub raced onto a ball over the top, lobbed the ball past the on rushing Scott Loach, another sub Nouha Dicko then tapped in to round off a pretty good day and first week of the season.

Gomes and Osbourne impressed in the middle of the park again, forever pressing and winning the ball back high up the pitch. We had a quick chance to see Alberto Noguera who came on a sub later one. Cathcart played well too, it’s hard to see how either Evatt, Fergerson, Grandin or Matt Phillips will get into the starting lineup.

Overall a great week and good to see us taking more chances, 6 goals from 7 shots on target today compared to only grabbing 2 goals from 8 chances against Leeds on Tuesday. We now are now in the unknown position of behind ahead of competition, we’ve generally been the underdogs picking up form later in the season it will be interesting to see how we handle the pressure, but lets not get ahead of ourselves it’s only a week one, lets just enjoy the performances of the past week!

 

Pool 2 – 1 Leeds

Things are starting to fall in place nicely now after a 2-1 win over Leeds. I was unable to attend last night but BBC five Live with Sir Jimmy Armfield was a close second best.

Earlier in the day tweets from BFC related people and comments from Ollie suggested changes were to come due to having 3 games in a week such early on in the season. However the changes he made were out of necessity and not choice with Ian Evatt and Barry Ferguson both out with knocks. It was interesting that Matt Phillips was included on the bench after handing his transfer request in last week. It was almost written that he would come off the bench to win it.

We took a huge amount of points last year from losing positions. There seems to be a belief that despite going a goal down we would come back to win. No panic, no crazy tactics, no fear.

We created plenty of chances 20 shots, 8 on target In total but only took 2. On a different night we could have had more. In the end we took the ones that we needed a tap in from the sub Nouha Dicko and one from the other sub Matty Phillips. Check out the highlights if you haven’t seen them yet.

It’s hard to judge the feeling of a crowd after a game that you’re not able to attend, but the chatter after on twitter and Facebook really has the feeling that we could do something special this season.

I’m not going to say it but something special could happen.

The Ultimate Blackpool FC Twitter List

Over the past 12 months there’s been an explosion in people using twitter and there’s a few BFC related twitter accounts.

So I’ve created a list of players, ex-players, officials, local press and Pool fan sites. You can see the list and follow people via www.twitter.com/blackpoolfcblog/the-ultimate-blackpool-fc/members. I’ve also listed all the accounts below.

If you think I’ve missed anyone out leave a comment or message on me on twitter.

Current Players

Ex Players

Officials from the club

Press

Blackpool FC on the web

Matt Phillips in – More to come?

So transfer deadline day and we have started well with one in already, Matt Phillips from Wycombe. We’ve paid £325,000 for the winger with that possible rising to £700,000, there’s also a sell on fee. Only 19 Phillips has played 78 times for Wycombe scoring 8 goals, he’s also played for England under 19′s 5 times scoring 2 including this last minute goal against France.

He made his debut a few months after his 17th Birthday and in his time at Wycombe won two ‘Young Player of the Year’ awards at the end of the season as well as the League Two ‘Apprentice of the Year’.

He looks like another good young player to add to the squad with a raving review from Steve Claridge.