I've just got back from that debacle. Although, having said that, I do agree with Blackwell insofar as up to the goal we were - marginally - the better side but then it fell apart big time. And surely this is when you need your manager, your coaches and all the other friggin hanger-oners to get working but no they sat in the dug out - the friggin job lot of them - for going on twenty minutes doing absolutely nothing.
I have no hesitancy in saying that I disliked his appointment from the outset. I don't just mean manager - I wouldn't have had him back at the Lane doing the laundry never mind as a coach. I've said all this before and I did promise myself that I would "move on" but it's so friggin frustrating.
Southgates gone and I really did think I was coming home to read that Blackwell had gone. Surely during those twenty minutes he could have done one useful thing and written out his resignation. Having said that the one difficulty I have in him going now is that I would want every last one of his cohorts to be gone with him - so who does that leave to run the show?).
I can't be doing with this "he's done a great job" he hasn't. The truth is we'll never know whether someone else could have "saved us" post Robson; we'll never know if someone else could have found those extra points to take us to the Premier. But we do know that we were heading in the wrong direction for a while prior to the play-offs and we were god awful at the Final. And where are we today I should say just about at the point where he started!
Holloway today showed us what a good manager can do by making several changes to a winning team; identifying weaknesses in a poor first half performance and by making two critical half-time changes his team's a winner. Our man with a squad of 40 will never ever be able to do that.
