Blackpool figure keen to guide the way for youngsters after not 'hitting the heights' in own career
Blackpool U18s head coach Matthew Blinkhorn is hopeful his personal experiences will prove beneficial for the Seasiders youngsters looking to make their way in the game.
Matthew Blinkhorn believes Blackpool’s youngsters have a good bank of experience to feed off to implement into their own careers.
The 40-year-old, who is the Seasiders’ U18s head coach, is among a number of staff members at Bloomfield Road who wore the famous Tangerine during their own playing careers.
Blinkhorn worked his way up through the youth ranks on the Fylde Coast, before making 56 senior appearances for the club between 2001 and 2007, during which time he found the back of the net on 10 occasions.
Following his Blackpool departure, the retired striker spent time with the likes of Morecambe, Sligo Rovers and Fylde, before hanging up his boots with Lancaster City.
During his final years as a player, Blinkhorn made the transition into coaching, returning to the Seasiders initially, before spending time with Fleetwood Town.
His current stint back at Bloomfield Road started in 2020, which has seen him work with a range of different players over the last few years.
A positive start to the campaign
Following the U18s’ 1-0 defeat to Preston North End in the Central League Cup on Tuesday afternoon, Blinkhorn reflected on the range of experiences his side have tasted in the past month, and discussed how he is using his own career to help others.
“It’s been a really positive start to the season,” he said.
“We’ve played a lot of football against a lot of different categories. We’ve played Celtic, Rangers, Liverpool, Man City - so we’ve had a varied programme.
“The North End game is one they can learn from and will help with their development because of how aggressive they were with their press, so we needed to put our style onto them a little bit better.
“We’ve won seven or eight out of 10 games, so that’s a positive, but the lads have also been training with the first-team - and that’s ultimately what the job is about.
“Obviously my career didn’t hit the heights that I wanted to hit, which is why I do this job. Hopefully the lads can take little bits of information on board from my experience of what I did well and what I maybe didn’t do well, and they can implement that to achieve their potential. There’s a lot of experience to help the players, it’s not just me, it’s all of the staff.
“When Bloomfield Road is bouncing, there’s no better stadium to be at, so we try to bring that into it, but it’s hard to explain that feeling, so the lads ball boy so they can see it rocking, and that hopefully that inspires them to step on the pitch and be a hero.”
Benefits of change
Last summer Blackpool made the decision to scrap their development squad, and focus more on ensuring the club’s young players picked up vital experience out on loan.
Meanwhile, the decision to make former youth coach Stephen Dobbie part of Steve Bruce’s backroom staff has also opened up more avenues for the Seasiders academy.
“There’s been loads of benefits,” Blinkhorn added.
“Dobbs (Stephen Dobbie) going into the first-team gives us a clear line of communication on how the lads are doing.
“It’s been much better over the last 12 months in terms of players getting access to training with the first-team. Obviously we always want more and we want to keep driving that to try and get players more minutes.
“We like that they’re getting more chances, but they’ve got to go up there and make an impression, they can’t just be a number. They’ve got to keep pushing, and be better than the player in the starting line-up at the minute.
“We’ll keep working with them to close that gap between U18s football and the first-team environment.
“Getting rid of the development squad meant some of the players were coming a little bit less. Some of the loans work, some of them don’t, but that’s a young player's journey, and we’ve got to support them with that.
“This year we’ve got Terry (Bondo) as an U19s, and he’s the only one. Next year, it may look a little bit different depending on how these second years go. It’s always a work in progress, and it can change year-by-year depending on the group we’ve got in the building.”
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