Such is the current turmoil at Blackpool Football Club, there is an extent to which whatever happens on the field is almost peripheral. Not, of course, that it makes it any less painful for the supporters, some couple of hundred of whom made the long journey down from the North-west to see their side concede three goals, and the cup tie, in the first half-hour at Northampton.
There had been some talk beforehand of another protest aimed at the club’s reviled owners, the Oystons, but those who travelled remained sitting quietly, indeed for the most part mournfully, in the away stand. The fact Owen Oyston has actually responded to an offer from the supporters’ trust to buy the club, albeit simply to ask for clarification on a number of points, appears to have engendered an uneasy truce, and there was no repeat of the pitch invasion which caused the pre-season friendly against Lancaster City to be abandoned.
Banners were displayed, of course, inside and on the hill outside the ground, just before kick-off, but were politely taken down when the stadium rose for a minute’s applause in tribute to the former Everton midfielder Andy King, who spent a couple of years as assistant Northampton manager, and who died recently aged 58.
In fact with one stand incomplete, and another closed, there was a curiously bloodless atmosphere from the start, and it was the Cobblers who made the early running. CThe centre-forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin headed one cross on to the top of the bar but on 20 minutes Chris Hackett, with the aid of a hefty deflection, turned David Buchanan’s pull-back past Kyle Letheren.
Four minutes later Calvert-Lewin proved rather more accurate with his left foot than he had been with his head, turning on a penalty area rebound and shooting left-footed beyond Letheren. Sam Hoskins put away the third, just before the half-hour, and Blackpool shoulders slumped still further when following their first attack of the game, and in fact only attack of the first half, Jack Redshaw miskicked when it looked easier to score.
Neil McDonald made two changes at half-time, and one 10 minutes later, but though Blackpool improved, Northampton were going through the motions. “We were rubbish in the first half, we didn’t pass the ball or show any composure, and that’s being kind,” said McDonald, who added that he hopes to bring in two or three more players before the end of the transfer window. “But we showed some determination to win the second half, so I have to hang on to that.”
For the supporters, however, it is a change of regime that matters.
