Blackpool boss refuses to follow football fashion

Pool have persisted with a traditional 4-4-2 formation this season and have created a bagful of chances in the majority of games.

Going into tomorrow’s FA Cup second-round tie with Brackley, the Seasiders sit in the League Two play-off zone and are the third-highest scorers, with 33 from 19 games.

Chelsea are among the Premier League sides enjoying success with a 3-5-2 formation but Bowyer says he won’t be swayed by fashionable tactics.

The Pool boss said: “Wherever I’ve been in my career I’ve always gone with two strikers.

“You look back to my time at Blackburn, with Rudy Gestede and Jordan Rhodes, and when I came here it was the same policy. I wanted to get strikers through the door.

“I like playing with two up top, it’s as simple as that.

“Some weeks you get praised for it but when you get beaten you get people questioning why you do it.

“I’m going to stick with two up top as that’s what I enjoy watching.

“The diamond is back in fashion. Sometimes circumstances dictate how you play but in our last three or four games the opposition have played a diamond. Three at the back is looking quite trendy this season as well.

“It’s their choice but we’ve just got to look at ourselves and focus on what we do.”

The Pool boss has praised his side’s performances for much of the season, even though they have only recently started to reap the benefits in terms of results – they bid for a fifth successive home win tomorrow, having scored 14 goals in the previous four.

Bowyer stressed there had been a need to put foundations in place at the start of the season and acknowledged it would take time to come to fruition.

He added: “A lot of people look at you when you’re doing press and they think: ‘Oh, he’s talking rubbish’.

“But there haven’t been many games when I’ve said we shouldn’t have been out of sight, and I’ve honestly believed that. That’s been a big part of our play – how we’ve gone about it in terms of the chances we’ve created.

“We’re now being really, really clinical in front of goal and that’s pleasing.”

Bowyer added that building relationships between his players is just as important as getting his tactics and formation spot on.

“You build up relationships and that’s how you get consistency. That’s why it amazes me that clubs make so many managerial changes after such a short period of time,” he said.

“You have got to build those relationships and that has to be taken into consideration.”