'Consistency is important' states Blackpool boss as he discusses the club's evolving tactical set-up

The Seasiders have used a system involving three central defenders and wing-back throughout the campaign so far, with different variations in both midfield and attack utilised at different stages.

Blackpool are without a win in their last four league games heading into this weekend’s fixture away to Peterborough United at the Weston Homes Stadium, with their most recent outing being a 2-0 defeat to Cheltenham Town at The Completely-Suzuki Stadium on Tuesday night. Despite their mixed form leaving them eight points behind the play-off places, Critchley states there’s no plans to make any major changes.

“It’s not down to formation or our strategy; it’s consistency in terms of our performances, particularly away from home,” he said.

"It’s something we need to work on and speak about in order to find a better remedy for those types of games. We try to have a developing environment here that is one of continuous improvement- even if we had won the last five games, I’d be saying we need to get better because that’s the way we want to challenge ourselves. Win, lose or draw we have a process.

"It’s quite clear what we want to do and how we do it. There’s been a lot of change within the club with staff and players, and sometimes a little bit of stability gives you a chance of moving forward in the future.

"I’m always open minded about what we should do, and how we should approach games, but when you’re trying to build something clarity and consistency is important; if you come away from that too often then the players start to question why. If you look at our squad, I think it suits what we’ve got in the building right now.

"We’ve won games playing this system this season, and we’ve evolved. We’ve tinkered how we’ve played in certain games, and that’ll continue to take place between now and the end of the season.

"I’ll leave other people to say whether we are underachieving or not. Should we be playing better than what we did on Tuesday night- yeah without a shadow of a doubt. Our competitiveness wasn’t good enough, and I’m fully aware of that, it’s my job to do something about that. We can only look forward now because I can’t control what’s happened in the past.

“I believe some of our performances have merited a better points return recently, we haven’t done well enough at both ends of the pitch.

"There should be consideration of where we are as a club and as a squad, from where we were last season and where we are now. If you look at the team, it’s evolved a lot, and sometimes it takes time to rebuild, which is what we’ll continue to do.

"It’s very frustrating when you’re so strong at home and then so disappointing away, as a group we’ve got to rectify that as quickly as possible. We have to deal with the criticism that comes our way, accept it, and use it as fuel to move forward.”