Are Blackpool starting to become victims of their own success?

Promotion from League One came a year earlier than expected given the comments Simon Sadler made when he first took over in 2019.

With Neil Critchley at the helm, the words “staying up” were rarely, if ever, muttered following Blackpool’s return to the Championship.

The aim was to finish as high up the table as possible and at one point, somewhat unrealistically in hindsight, Critchley was even eyeing a late run to the play-offs before Blackpool’s form crashed and burned during the final stages of the campaign, eventually settling for a more than impressive 16th placed finish on 60 points.

Safety from relegation was confirmed in March but it was widely accepted from February onwards that Blackpool would be lining up in the second tier again this season as a bare minimum.

Not bad at all for a side who had come up via the League One play-offs.

There’s no doubting those objectives have been scaled back a little since Critchley’s departure and Michael Appleton’s return to the Bloomfield Road hotseat. Appleton has said so himself on multiple occasions.

Speaking only last week prior to the trip to Millwall, Pool’s head coach said it would be “one hell of a season” if his side matched or bettered last year’s total, but insisted it wasn’t the club’s aim.

We’ve heard from the horse’s mouth on a number of occasions that the objective this season is to stay up at any cost.

Is that fair? Is Appleton just being realistic? Or should the Seasiders be a tad more ambitious than that?

It’s important to note Critchley made similar warnings towards the back end of his tenure on the Fylde coast, when he talked about the potential of a “second season syndrome”. I think he knew deep down it was always going to be tricky to build on the excellent first album. But does that mean you don’t try?

In the competitive world of the Championship where, with all due respect, Blackpool are a small fish in a vast, vast ocean filled with sharks, an aim of retaining your divisional status first and foremost can’t be knocked.

The Seasiders can never take just being a Championship club for granted, especially in a season like this where there have been no points deduction like last year.

While we’re only 10 games in, it appears the division will be a lot more competitive than last season with fewer points separating the sides right at the bottom to those on the fringes of the play-offs.

Norwich, Sheffield United and so on will be in and around the top six, that much is a given. But what happens below those play-off spots is up for debate.

I certainly don’t envisage any team, points deductions aside, finishing with a tally as low as 30 or 37, as Barnsley and Peterborough United did last season.

But if we’re being realistic, I see Blackpool as part of a clutch of clubs that could finish anywhere between 15th or 16th and the bottom of the table. That’s why I’d take Pool’s current position of 19th in a heartbeat.

I look at clubs like Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Huddersfield, Hull, Millwall, Wigan and even Reading and Rotherham despite their great starts and think they’re in a similar boat to the Seasiders.

I’m fully aware phrases like “we’ve just got to stay up” and “I’d take 19th right now” aren’t particularly appealing to some supporters. It’s a hard sell, that’s for sure. But it’s also the reality of the situation.

Had Blackpool enjoyed a stronger transfer window, perhaps things would be different. Had Critchley stuck around, who knows how they would have started the season?

There’s no point dwelling on the past though, we can only focus on what is in front of us in the here and now.

It’s fair to say Blackpool’s displays and results have been mixed so far this season, but there have been some positives.

If you take any note of Expected Goals (xG) and other data, the Seasiders should be a couple of positions better off in the table. So it’s not like their performance levels are worryingly bad, they’ve been about par.

I ran a poll on social media this week, asking supporters how they ranked Blackpool’s start to the season. The general consensus seemed to be it’s been fairly average to perhaps slightly worse than expected, which seems pretty reasonable.

The fact Blackpool lost back-to-back games before the international break has obviously worsened the mood. This isn’t helped by looking at the next four fixtures, either.

But the Seasiders have already proven they can go toe-to-tie with a supposed promotion favourite in Burnley, so they can do it.

But this next batch of 11 games in the space of just six weeks before sides break for the winter World Cup could prove absolutely crucial.

Appleton certainly hasn’t been helped in his endeavours by injuries and suspensions, but I’ve long accepted that Blackpool will always have at least five or six players on the sidelines. It’s been that way for years now. Why? I’ve no idea, but again, it just seems to be the reality of the situation.

It would be remiss of me to conclude this week’s column without paying homage to two club legends in Charlie Adam and Gary Taylor-Fletcher, who have both been in the news this week.

The latter is back in management with non-league Nantwich Town, while the former has called time on his exceptional playing career to focus on coaching himself.

Adam is a name that will forever remain in Blackpool folklore, so The Gazette wishes him all the best for what comes next and we hope to see you back at Bloomfield Road soon.