I'm not so sure....
I think there has been an awful lot of pressure from the Fans about this idea of 'Playing the Blackpool Way'... In fact I honestly rue the day when SS ever talked about the whole 'Attacking Entertaining Football' thing, because it has set a completely unrealistic expectation to my mind... Football is Football in my book and it's generally more exciting when you are winning and competing at the top of the League than when you aren't...
Listening to the Pod the other night I was sat there thinking to myself "What a load of utter bollocks" As each of the podcasters came out with the usual bullshit, that they'd happily accept losing if we'd put in a good shift and given it a good go.... What a load of crap... You can handle 'giving it a good go' and losing for an occasional match or maybe an FA Cup Match against Premier League opposition, but for the most part losing is shit and depressing, whether you gave it a good go (whatever that really means) or whatever else you might do that isn't 'giving it a good go' [I'm going off at a slight tangent]
So 4-4-2 was great and we did well in terms of results, but in the end it wasn't good enough and didn't meet the grade for "Exciting Attacking Football" and so I think that SS has felt the pressure to implement the plan.... Appleton came in and tried his hand at delivering to the plan and failed miserably....Then we ended up just doing what was necessary.
In the case of Critchley MK2, I think he's been given the objective to deliver to the requirement of 'Playing the Blackpool Way' ... We set u[p aggressively and with a view to trying to deliver. We are trying to play proper football and encourage a passing game, but for whatever reason we seem to be struggling (or struggling away from home)... However I think the persistence maybe has more to do with striving to achieve that objective and not just compromising and doing back to an effective, but limited system and instead being prepared to go through the difficult times and getting the plan to work - eventually.
I feel there's a disconnect between his instinct and his tactical plan. It's not the joined up thinking that made you sometimes go 'how did he plot that?' first time round.
There may be something to what you say. There was at the back end of the Critch regime some quite vocal stuff (I was part of it) about how his constant switching of tactics, whilst effective, undermined our ability to recruit strategically because it was hard to build a squad based on the fact we could be one thing one week and another totally different thing the next.
Whether Critchley himself has reflected in a similar way or someone in the senior management has that vision that we play in a particular singular manner because it gives identity, I'm not sure.
What I don't think Critchley likes is chaos. Where I think someone like say, Darren Ferguson and to a degree Evatt sees chaos as a chance to overwhelm the opposition, Critchley wants control.
The problem is, I don't think this suits this squad. We play in squares. We don't move fluidly as we need to. The passing is fine, but the movement isn't there. I'm not sure we've got the players to make this work as when you add any formation up, it's lacking somewhere. Yet overall, the squad is solid enough.
It's possible Critchley's irritability comes from that - from being sort of trapped by the plan but if so, he's wearing the plan like a straightjacket and interpreting it in an extremely literal manner.
The thing is, he's brought all of these players to the club bar Lyons. If he was a.n.other manager, you might say 'well, give it time, we've seen good things (and we have)' but Critchley is different. Ok, he had a year away, but he's already had more time than everyone else combined in the Sadler era
I don't know what it is. I don't know if he needs an assistant or the players need that assistant to temper how he comes across to them or if he's just burned out or if we need a clear out and a refresh or everything.
My preference in summer was a clean slate. I genuinely, honestly think that had we been a bit more gung ho about how we play and had a higher, riskier tempo we'd all get more out of it.
We're not exciting and we're not especially good and I think it's fundamentally weird if our aim is 'good football' that CJ is the absolute nailed on first pick every week. God love the lad, he takes some unfair stick and he's done ok - but he's never, ever a division winning wing back cos he's just not good enough at basic footballing skills (i.e trapping or controlling a moving ball) to be that critical to a fluid, passing, footballing side. He absolutely has his place and value in a squad but I don't get why you'd bin off Owen Dale who is actually very good at those skills or farm out possibly the most skillful player bar Dembele if you were fulfilling a 'play good football' brief.
That's what confuses me. I can't work it out. I can't read what it is we're trying to do. I get we pass it about and try to draw the press. I get that we press quite well. How do we overload? How do we rotate and draw defenders? How do we change shape or drop tempo and raise tempo to unsettle opposition's?
The version of 'good football' seems quite limited. We play when we're allowed to basically.
Essentially, I think a lot of the frustration comes from how it feels as if there's stuff we don't do and don't try to do and it's quite similar to what Appleton didn't do. It's like 'we do this. End' and it's frustrating seeing managers like Neil Harris or Darryl Clarke outfox us on matchday by absorbing that and countering it with a seeming ease.
Basically, if you sit on Dembele and bully Casey or press Marv hard we're done for.
I think I partly agree with you, Critch is better than this. I don't get why he isn't showing it.