Norman Ralph

After the relative success of my recent post on Blackpool’s start to this season’s Premier League campaign, which got reposted on a couple of well respected football blogs, I thought I would write a second piece on the beautiful game.

This piece is focussed on one of the main reasons for Blackpool’s current success story, their manager and coach Ian Holloway. Holloway, who made 2 short of 600 league appearances as a tenacious midfield player, has had a relatively low key career to date. Many of his playing days were spent in the lower leagues with teams such as Bristol Rovers (where he had three successful stints over 18 years), Plymouth Argyle and QPR. He was known as a hard working midfielder who fitted in well in the hard working teams of the bottom couple of tiers of English professional football. His spell at QPR under manager Gerry Francis saw Holloway taste the top flight for several seasons, playing over a hundred times in a four year spell in the Premier League, scoring 4 goals.

Holloway took his first steps into management in 1996 when he rejoined Bristol Rovers as Player-Manager. Bristol were struggling in Division 2 (now League 1) and looked likely to get relegated. Holloway steered the club clear of the drop and managed to finish in a safe 17th position. With a full off-season to work with the squad, Ollie managed to guide the team to a play-off place in the 1997-1998 season. Bristol Rovers were unlucky to lose their semi-final play-off game 4-3 on aggregate to a strong Northampton Town outfit. After finishing a disappointing 13th the following season, Holloway retired as a player and took on management full time. 1999-2000 saw Bristol Rovers move back up the table to 7th place, narrowly missing a play-off spot.

In 2001 Holloway took the QPR manager’s job and was tasked with avoiding relegation. Holloway failed and tasted his only taste of relegation is his career. Holloway learned a lot from the experience and rebuilt the squad from scratch. He started to demonstrate some of the traits we see today, he began to think about how he could turn a club around in a season. Unfortunately, QPR did not bounce straight back up and spent three seasons in League 1 before winning automatic promotion back to the Championship in 2004. A couple of mid table finishes in the next two seasons started to see Holloway linked with a few higher profile jobs, especially that of Leicester City. However, Holloway blames the arrival of F1 mogul Flavio Briatore as the the main reason for the club’s dip inf form and his own apparent lack of focus. QPR narrowly avoided relagation in 2006 and Holloway spent the majority of the tail end of the season on gardening leave.

In June 2006 Holloway was appointed as boss of Plymouth Argyle, the third club he had now managed and played for in his career. Holloway spent a little over a season at Plymouth, leaving them in 2007 to become the manager of Leicester City. This decision was not met well by the Plymouth supporters after Holloway had promised them the Premier League. In an interview he would later give, Holloway looked back on this period and said:

I had a year out of football and had to think about what went wrong in my life. I was given some decent values from my mum and dad in our council house and one of them was honesty and trust and loyalty, and I forgot to do all that at Plymouth. I left them and I made the biggest mistake of my life. But I ended up here [Blackpool] and it was the best thing I have ever done. Daily Mail, 2010

Holloway’s time at Leicester was not a happy one. He had developed health problems due to the extensive commuting he was doing as a result of caring for his profoundly deaf children, he also experienced his second taste of relagation, losing to old club Plymouth Argyle 1-0 along the way. Following relegation, Holloway and Leicester parted company.

A year out of the game saw Holloway concentrate on his family and personal life. Holloway battled his sciatica and anger management issues and in May 2009 was appointed as the manager of Blackpool FC following the departure of Tony Parkes as caretaker. 15 months later, Holloway and Blackpool played in the Premier League, beating Wigan Athletic 4-0.

Enough of the history lessons. Ian Holloway has always been an eccentric figure. Seen in the media and by a number of other managers as a bit of a clown (though he was voted the 15th funniest Londoner in a Time Out poll in 2006), he has been know to give some interesting post match interviews. Whilst at Plymouth Argyle as a manager, he offered to buy every one of the travelling supporters a drink to say thanks for their support. This image has led to many doubting his ability as a manager and coach.

However, recent history has shown this is not necessarily the case. Holloway knows the game he wants to play and tries to build his teams around that game. Holloway is very much a proponent of the “we’ll score one more than you” school of football philosophy and believes that attack is the better form of defence. Holloway often deploys a minimum of three attacking players at Blackpool, often supplementing these with additional forward thinking midfield players. he is also not shy about making attacking changes late in games, even with a slender lead.

In my opinion, where Ian Holloway excels as a manager and coach is the psychological game. He is no talent scout like Arsene Wenger, or a wheeler dealer like Harry Redknapp. He is certainly no tactical wizard like Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti. What Ian Holloway is, however, is a motivator. He manages to get relatively mediocre talent and make them play with passion, intent and desire. He turns Championship players like Taylor-Fletcher, Evatt and DJ Campbell into solid Premier League players. I am not trying to have a dig at the quality of the squad, it is what it is based on budget, stature and training facilities. What I am saying is that under a different manager, even a better tactical manager, Blackpool would probably not be in the same position they find themselves in today. In terms of his ability to get the best out of players, he reminds me a lot of Alex Ferguson. I do not for a moment think that Holloway is the next Alex Ferguson, or even close to him, but they have the same ability to make people play and love playing.

The obvious example of this ability is in the pre-season signings that holloway made when Blackpool won promotion. He shunned the traditional European and South American journeymen that many promoted sides plump for and instead went for Premier League rejects such as Craig Cathcart and Marlon Harewood and players that needed and wanted to provide themselves after being jettisoned by other clubs. He demanded that the players he signed bought into his philosophy of attacking football and had a desire to play 38 games a 110% of their ability and turn up and give 100% each and every week.

This approach will probably keep Blackpool in the league and will probably see Holloway extend his current two year deal. I think Blackpool will not stay in the Premier League long term unless they can attract better quality players, the euphoria of promotion and the passion that Holloway is getting the existing squad to play with will not last forever. We have seen in the past with teams like Reading, Wigan and Hull that good first seasons count for very little in subsequent years. However, I think that in Ian Holloway, Blackpool have a coach they can stick with and build the club around.