Tangerine Dream

What do Reading, Blackpool, Wigan Athletic, Stoke City and Burnley all have in common? Well in the season 1999/2000 those five clubs were playing in the third tier of English professional football, what was called in those days Nationwide Division 2, although to anybody over a certain age it will always be 'the old Third Division' whilst to anybody under the age of 10 it will be called League One. Confusing eh? Hull City were a division lower.

The point being that whilst the upper echelons of the football pyramid may seem a tad boring and predictable the fact that over the twenty years of Premiership existence a total of 44 clubs have taken part in the most over hyped league in the history of football does actually show that if you care to dream, those dreams may come true.

Blackpool's short stay in the sun may be as swift as that of Barnsley or Burnley or slightly longer like that of Bradford City. Of course it's not just teams beginning with the letter B who have been promoted and relegated to and from the Premiership, but being called Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers or Birmingham City obviously didn't help those teams, although to be fair all bounced back - in the case of Birmingham more than once.

It's quite possible that Blackpool will be the worst team in the history of the Premiership, on paper their current squad is a lot poorer than the Derby County side of 2007-8 who went down with a total of 11 points and a goal difference of -69. It's difficult to see any of the current Premiership squads being strengthened by the addition of any player currently plying his trade at the 12,000 capacity Bloomfield Road. But that's not the point, Ian Holloway will go down in footballing history as one of its great learners, a man who rejected the notion of being a serial football recidivist, somebody who decided to eschew the long ball game in favour of the beautiful game. Holloway watched Swansea under Roberto Martinez and saw the light, he learned what all great coaches have learned since football began, that the way to beat the opposition is to play the ball around them. Yes, you can lump it up to some big useless bloke up front and watch it bounce back off his foot as he tries in vain to trap it but that will get you only so far, ultimately the teams that win do so through guile, craft and skill.

Watching the Blackpool v Cardiff game on Saturday afternoon was like watching two teams play in some far off galaxy, this wasn't a game between two teams who didn't want to lose this was between two teams who both wanted to win. To take that first step on the stairway to heaven, to hear the sound of 90 million one pound coins falling over the edge of the lucky dip machine in one of the amusement arcades on Blackpool prom. There was no cynicism, hardly a bad tackle, no moaning about the dodgy Wembley pitch, in fact the only time a player did fall over it went Blackpool's way when DJ Campbell's slip presented his team mate Brett Ormerod with his chance to make it 3-2.

Well done Ian Holloway and hard luck to Dave Jones, two of football's nice guys.