There's a whole series of factors to weigh up and in all truth, none of us are in a position to acyt as 'Judge and Jury' about whether or not Appleton made the right call or the wrong call. Maxwell was our Club Captain, he's hugely influential around the place, is a senior and experience pro and we were desperately lacking experience and organisation at the back.
The problem (as ever) is that over time everyone forgets about the situation we faced back then, the fact that plenty of fans were calling for Maxwell to return, the fact that Maxwell (until his injury) had been un-droppable and Grimshaw miraculously gets much better with each passing day that he spends on the bench... Quite honestly if any of the players on our bench performed even half as well in reality as they do in the imagination of some of our supporters, we'd have been promoted to the Premier League had we 'only' played them....
Ultimately a manager is there to play his best players and to win games... NOT to concern himself with whether or not we might need to sell a particular player at some point down the line.
To my mind, this whole saga (as seems to be the norm for us lot really) has been blown out of all proportion and the classic molehill has turned into a mountain.
The fact of the matter is that neither of them are particularly good as an all round keeper... They are what I would call 'Typical Blackpool' keepers insomuch as they are decent shot stoppers, but aren't great at dealing with crosses and don't really command their area. Proper (all round goalkeepers) have been few and far between in the time I've been watching Blackpool.