Why Blackpool fans shouldn't judge Michael Appleton's style of football from his first spell

The 46-year-old only took charge of 11 games during a brief spell as Blackpool boss during the 2012/13 campaign.

Due to his frustrations working under the Oyston regime, Appleton decided to up sticks abruptly after just 65 days to join Blackburn Rovers.

One of his bugbears at the time was the state of the infamous Bloomfield Road pitch, which made passing, flowing football practically impossible.

Appleton believes Pool fans should take a look at how his Lincoln City and Oxford United sides played under his tenure.

He told The Gazette: “When I was last here the pitch was like one of the sand dunes on the Lytham or Blackpool front!

“Joking aside, the home games I had here, every single opposition manager commented on how bad the pitch was and what a disgrace it was. But there will be none of those excuses now.

“From our point of view, I just want to play an attacking, aggressive brand of football.

“Irrespective of what people might want to say or think, that’s how I always played at Oxford and at Lincoln. Sometimes it works, sometimes you find yourselves under the cosh because the players haven’t been able to adapt quickly enough to deal with it.

“But we’ve got a group of players here that want to play forward-thinking, aggressive and attack-minded football.”

Kenny Dougall, CJ Hamilton and Shayne Lavery returned to Squires Gate yesterday as week two of Blackpool’s pre-season got underway.

The trio were granted an extra week of absence following their international exploits for their respective countries during the off-season.

Dougall was part of the Australia squad that qualified for this winter’s World Cup in Qatar, CJ Hamilton made his debut for the Republic of Ireland and Lavery bagged his second goal in Northern Ireland colours.

Preparations will ramp up this week ahead of Blackpool’s first summer friendly away to Southport on Saturday.

In other news, former Pool assistant Mike Garrity has joined Mark Kennedy’s backroom staff at Lincoln City.