Blackpool boss looks forward to Ipswich Town test

The Seasiders welcome the Tractor Boys to Bloomfield Road looking to kickstart their campaign, having lost three of their opening four League One games.

Ipswich have started strongly, picking up 10 points from their first four outings. Paul Lambert’s side will be targeting promotion back to the Championship, which makes this an intriguing match-up.

Critchley said: “It’s a big club in this division. They will have aspirations of being right up there. If we are too, then it’s a real good barometer for us.

“It will be good to see where we are in comparison to them. If we have aspirations of doing well this season, then it will be a good yardstick for us to come off the pitch and think, ‘Yes, we’re as good as them’ or ‘We’ve got work to do’. I’ll be really interested to see over the 90 minutes how we match up against them.”

The Seasiders had been scheduled for a trip to Sunderland this weekend only for that game to be postponed after the Black Cats had three players called up for international duty.

Ipswich suffered a similar fate with their intended fixture against Charlton Athletic.

The two sides then got together and decided to move their Bloomfield Road game forward from November to avoid a fixture backlog later in the campaign.

Critchley said: “You only have to look at the fixture list that is coming up – any sort of backlog you might encounter because of international call-ups and potential postponements could cause an issue.

“We didn’t want a free weekend, particularly when we’ve just got started.

“We’ve got a significant amount of games coming up, and with Ipswich being in a similar situation we thought it was better to play this weekend rather than doing nothing.

“It was done through the EFL – it was something they proposed.

“I think there were a few other teams as well but it was us and Ipswich who thought it was the right thing to do.”