Neil Critchley tells Blackpool players: Keep your heads up

Despite the body blows, Blackpool remain in good form and head into tonight’s match at MK Dons (7pm) unbeaten in five games and having won five of their last eight.

Head coach Critchley said: “We have 17 games to go, which is an enormous number of points to play for.

“Psychologically you can feel like you’re coming to the end of the season because we’re now in March and the season ends on May 8, so we haven’t got a lot of time.

“But in terms of games, we’ve got plenty left because under normal circumstances this point would come around January or early February.

“We just need to make sure that if we suffer a setback, like we did on Saturday, then we don’t dwell on it because we’ve got plenty of games to come.

“We might even lose the odd game but it’s about how we bounce back.”

Had Pool won on Saturday, they would be five points off the top six with three games in hand.

But with so many games left, Critchley says his players can’t afford to get too sucked into the league table.

“I think the psychology of the players and staff is so important,” he said.

“I still haven’t looked at the league table but I know roughly where we are because everyone keeps telling me.

“Saturday felt like a defeat because of the lateness of the goal, but if you look at our form over the last five or six games and the amount of points we’ve got, it’s very good.

“If we stay in a similar vein on form and keep accumulating the same number of points that we have been doing, then we’ll be happy.

“It was disappointing to drop those two points on Saturday but there’s real competition for places. When a player is coming into a team that is in form, then it’s easier for them to play well.”

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