Brett Ormerod column: Neil Critchley has done an unbelievable job in his first two years in charge of Blackpool

Earlier this week Blackpool fans were marking the two-year anniversary of Neil Critchley’s first day in the job.

He’s done unbelievably well. Given it’s his first proper management job in senior football, he’s taken to it like a duck to water.

He spent a lot of time working his way up before that and he was clearly a highly-rated coach at Liverpool.

He’s been a breath of fresh air and he’s building a very good squad, so you have to feel excited about the coming years.

Things don’t always happen overnight so for him to enjoy the success he’s had already shows you what a remarkable job he’s done.

Naturally you begin to wonder what the next step is for Blackpool now. There’s no reason why they can’t push up the table next season and launch a real challenge, but the problem is you’re competing with big, big clubs at this level with far bigger budgets than Blackpool.

Just look at Bournemouth and the business they did in January, it was ridiculous. They’re trying to buy their way back into the Premier League and it will probably work, but how are Blackpool supposed to compete with that?

When teams have the spending power, they gamble and you’ve got so many teams in the same boat who are trying to get into that position. It’s a very, very difficult league to get out of.

Looking back to last weekend, it was great to see Blackpool claim an emphatic victory against Reading.

A 4-1 win in the Championship is always going to be a fantastic result regardless of who you’re playing. I know Reading are struggling but they’ve still got some good players.

The thing is, Blackpool are still finding their feet in this league and they’re learning every week. Players are improving all the time and that bodes well for next season.

The aim now has got to be to push for the top half and the top 10 and finish as high as possible, although there’s still a chance of the play-offs if they go on a good run. There’s no reason why they can’t do that.

Looking at the table though, there’s a lot of sides in the mix. Blackpool just need to make sure they get enough points to avoid relegation and then take it from there.

They won’t get sucked into a relegation fight now, they’re too good a team and there’s too many points between themselves and the bottom three.

They’ve just got to go for every game and see where they end up - and who knows? But a lot of teams around that mid-table area will be thinking the same thing.

They’re arguably facing one of those sides this weekend in Stoke City, who were in and around the top six at one point but have drifted away a bit in recent weeks.

They seem to have fallen out of the pack a little bit alongside West Brom, which will be disappointing for them. But they’ve still got time to turn it around.

I thought they looked a decent team when they came to Bloomfield Road earlier in the season, but every team is decent in this league as I’ve said on many occasions.