Simon Grayson: Blackpool sparked into life with thrilling display

Pool were back to their early-season best, with manager Grayson stating his side rediscovered their “spark”.

He said: “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing against, this is how we want to be playing and we’ve not managed to do that recently for whatever reason.

“We worked on a few things last week, and we saw a different shape where we wanted to be more positive and get them playing on the back foot.

“We wanted forward passes and people running forward more – things we’ve been working on all season but people haven’t been able to do.

“But against Peterborough a lot of spark came back to us.

“That has been missing from us over the last few weeks but we’ve had some players back from injury who we know will give us that spark.

“Those players are finding their feet. You look at Nathan Delfouneso and Sullay Kaikai – two lads we have missed a lot.

“They gave us that spark going forward with their pace and power, and Calum Macdonald came into the team and showed the quality he’s certainly got.”

Owner Simon Sadler, who flew over from Hong Kong on Friday to attend the game, spoke publicly during the summer about the need for Blackpool to entertain.

Grayson joked: “He said to me he wants to see more games like that but he’s obviously not stood on the touchline when it’s going 3-2, 3-3, 4-3.

“But in all seriousness, it’s how we want to play. We want to make sure we play with a purpose about us.

“We also want to get the balance right and be a team that is hard to beat as well.

“He flew over on Friday. We had a good meeting with him and (new chief executive) Ben Mansford, who has now started as well as Tommy Johnson (head of recruitment).

“All the meetings have been positive about where we want to go with this football club.”

When asked by The Gazette if this was Blackpool’s best performance of the season, Grayson said: “I think we played really well at Southend but you saw two sides of our game in this one.

“We had to dig deep because you’re playing against Ivan Toney and Mo Eisa, who are a handful, and Marcus Maddison – they have 30-odd goals between them.

“You’ve got to make sure you’re alert to things but we did want to ask questions of them as a team.

“They do like to play open football, so we wanted to get the players who can influence things on the ball and be positive in their approach.

“I want us to excite people and we did that.”