No pressure on Blackpool heading into the final nine games? Think again according to Neil Critchley

The Seasiders return to action today after a two-and-a-half week break with a televised home clash against Nottingham Forest (12.30pm kick-off).

A victory for Critchley’s side, who have won five of their last seven games at home, would cut the gap to the Championship play-offs to six points ahead of the 3pm kick-offs.

As a newly-promoted team, Pool could be forgiven for playing without pressure and seeing out the remainder of the campaign safely and securely in mid-table - but that’s not how Critchley is going to approach it.

“We’re there on merit,” he said.

“When you look at the teams above us, we’ve always competed with those teams. We’ve lost some games but we’ve won some as well.

“We’re in good form, we’ve won a lot of games at home, we’re playing at home on Saturday, we’ve not conceded in the last three games and we’re there on merit.

“We have an outside chance. We have a lot of teams in front of us but if we can keep chipping away then it becomes even more interesting at the end of the season.

“As the games decrease the games become more important and the points become more important and that continues with a really tough game on Saturday.”

When asked if his players can play with freedom and enjoy their football between now and May, Critchley added: “Yes to an extent, but we’re here on merit,” he added.

“Other than the first five or six games where we were finding our feet in the division and there were various reasons for that, we didn’t get off to the best of starts, but we deserve to be where we are.

“I don’t want to get to the end of the season and be thinking ‘what if?’, if we had scored that goal, if we hadn’t conceded that goal, if we had won that game etc.

“We are where we are because we deserve to be where we are, so we have nine games to go and we’ve got everything to play for, so let’s just go for it.”

The Seasiders have made good use of their rare break, getting a number of players back from injury and handing minutes to others in two behind-closed-door friendlies.

Critchley believes his side are now in a great position to attack the final nine games of the campaign.

“It’s been strange having no football, two-and-a-half weeks is a long time to have no game,” he said.

“We’ve used the time to our benefit but the time has looked different for different individuals.

“Ones who have played a lot of football, you can give them a little rest and the ones who haven’t played as much football, we’ve managed to get some valuable minutes into them and the ones who have been injured get a little bit more time and training to bring them closer back to the first-team squad.

“I hope we’ve utilised the time as best as we can for everyone in the squad and hopefully we see the benefit of that ahead of a busy period in April.”

Blackpool take on one of the division’s in-form sides today in Forest, who sit three points adrift of the play-offs with three games in hand.

Many are expecting Steve Cooper’s side to finish in the top six come the end of the season, so Critchley knows all too well how tricky the lunchtime clash will be.

“They’re a completely different proposition now under Coops because he’s done a remarkable job,” he said.

“They’re a top team with top players. They’ve hardly lost any games under him since taking over.

“They’ve had a great FA Cup run and they’re a really tough team to play against. They’re in front of us and they’ll be looking to get into the play-offs, while we’ll be looking to win to close the gap on them.

“But he’s done a fantastic job and I look forward to seeing him, but hopefully it will be him who’s not in a great mood after the game rather than the way I was feeling earlier in the season at the City Ground.”