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Canavan's blog: Nothing went right
A NIGHT summed up perfectly by the fate of Stephen Crainey. On as a 59th-minute sub, off 15 minutes later injured.
It was that kind of evening – from the start nothing went right.
During the first half a fire engine raced down Bloomfield Road with lights flashing. It raced back in the opposite direction a minute later.
It must have been as lost as some of the players in tangerine.
There was no lack of effort among the Blackpool ranks, with everyone putting in a shift and showing willing.
But for reasons that are hard to fathom, it just didn't happen. No cohesion, no passing game – instead a reliance on humping the ball forwards in the air, hardly ideal when DJ Campbell is the main frontman. A targetman he is not.
Have your say from 1pm today in our webchat as Steve Canavan talks about the current situation at Bloomfield Road.
The man they most missed was Keith Southern. It was exactly the sort of game in which Pool were crying out for a bit of fire and aggression in the middle.
David Vaughan and David Fox, who took those central roles, are nice footballers but they haven't got the bite that Southern has. Against Birmingham, Southern's big tackling made some of the opposition not fancy the battle.
Last night, QPR's midfielders never came under the same sort of pressure and thus controlled the contest.
Even Pool's luck with subs was out. Steve Thompson had just waved Liverpool loan man Krisztian Nemeth to the bench, telling him to get ready to go on, when Ian Evatt lunged and conceded a penalty.
By the time Nemeth entered the fray, Pool were two down and the game was as good as over.
In fact, all three subsprobably wished they'd not bothered getting on, for all had little luck.
Nemeth got a whack in the face that distracted him all evening, while Graeme Owens' first taste of the action was to embark on a mazy run and a flurry of stepovers which ended with him accidentally kicking the ball straight out of play. The fate of the third sub, Crainey, we already know about.
Not a night to live long in the memory – terrible weather, terrible game.
Roll on Saturday and Crystal Palace – it can only be better.
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Weather for Blackpool
Monday 13 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 32 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 6 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 28 mph
Wind direction: North west
