Blackpool’s harmony smells like team spirit to new signing Jak

The 26-year-old has been impressed with the team spirit since arriving at Bloomfield Road on loan from Rangers last month.

The Seasiders’ positive start to the new season has also helped, Simon Grayson’s men claiming maximum points from their opening two league games.

“My time here has been brilliant so far,” Alnwick said.

“It’s a great set of lads in the dressing room and there’s a mixture of young and older lads and new signings and players who have been here for a while.

“They’ve all welcomed me in straight away and I think you can see there’s a good team spirit. That’s important because teams that stick together will often go the furthest.

“I know players often talk about the togetherness and people might think it’s not that important, but it is massive.

“If you’ve got one player pulling in the wrong direction it can pull a lot of people down but here that isn’t the case.

“You can tell we’re all focused about what we want to do and there’s a good team spirit. If we keep that as long as possible it will get us a long way.

“Two wins and one clean sheet is a very good start, although I obviously would have liked the second clean sheet as well.

“But to take maximum points from the first two games sets us up nicely for the rest of the season.

“We want to make it three wins now after the disappointment of the midweek exit in the cup.

“It’s a nice competition where you can get a good little run together but our main focus is the league now and if we can get three, four or five wins on the bounce that is when things will start to take shape.”

The Seasiders prided themselves on their clean sheets last season under the management of Terry McPhillips, while it was their lack of ruthlessness at the other end of the pitch that let them down.

While Alnwick is obviously keen to keep as many shutouts as possible this season, it’s not something that is of a major concern.

“I don’t myself targets, but I obviously like to keep as many as I can,” the keeper said. “If a clean sheet helps us to win a game, then obviously I want to get one.

“Ultimately I’m here to win games and I’d rather see the team have a good record of winning games than me keeping clean sheets.

“If we win 5-3 or 1-0, to me I’m not one that’s going to be ranting and raving about not keeping clean sheets.”