Blackpool

Blackpool FC's website confirms that former Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester City, and England striker Robbie Fowler is training with the club.  Manager Ian Holloway was quoted as saying,

"Has he got some quality, can he find little pockets, can he play a pass, can he score a goal? Yes, he can. I still think he's hungry, I still think he wants to play and he's got undoubted quality."

Fowler's hunger should be in little doubt, as he's spent the past several years chasing the game in the professional leagues of Australia and Thailand.  And his Blackpool cameo is only made possible due to the delay of India's Premier Soccer League season where Fowler was contracted to play this season.

However, as hungry as Fowler may be, if his time at Blackpool progresses past training to an actual stint in the first team, it will show that Holloway has learned nothing from his past couple seasons.

What Blackpool needs more than a 36-year-old striker is a hefty dose of steely defending.  Take the evidence of its relegation doomed 2010-11 Premier League campaign.  The Seasiders scored 55 goals.  If the table were arranged accordingly, they would have found themselves comfortably in the top half.

However, Holloway's Blackpool conceded 78 goals.  Arrange the table that way and you find Blackpool dead last.  As it turned out just one spot lower than their actual 19th place finish.

Perhaps Holloway has fixed the defensive problems as he tries to take Blackpool right back to the Premiership?  No, no he hasn't.

Blackpool currently sits 4th in the table, just seven points back of front-runners Southampton.  The Seasiders are second only to the leaders in goals scored with 56 knocked in.  So there's that.

But their 43 goals allowed, so far this season, show that Blackpool is even a middling Championship side when they don't have the ball.

Robbie Fowler's introduction into training is probably a kick for some of the younger players who grew up watching him.  However, extending a contract to the former Spice Boy would show that Holloway took little in the way of instruction from Blackpool's cameo in the top flight.

Blackpool and Birmingham City have been relegated from the Premier League after last-day losses away to Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur respectively. They will join West Ham United in the Championship next season. The East London side went down last week after capitulating against Wigan Athletic who survived on the final day thanks to a 1-0 win away to Stoke City.

Blackburn Rovers and Wolves, who played each other, also survived a last day scare and stay up. At one stage, Wolves had dropped into the bottom three, but two second-half goals combined with results elsewhere was enough to guarantee survival for Mick McCarthy's hard working side.

The hardest truth in football is that you reap what you sow. You get what you deserve. Ninety minutes is enough time to determine one game. If you lose, you have no one to blame but yourself. Players know that making excuses about bad refereeing decisions, and bad luck is just an exercise in bullshit.

The same goes for relegation. If you go down, there is no two ways around it—you deserved it.

Blackpool, Birmingham and West Ham, despite picking up many new friends across the last 38 weeks, just weren't good enough.

If anything, you could probably make a decent Premier League team if you amalgamated all three sides, and that probably still wouldn't be good enough to stay up.

The Tangerines and Ian Holloway were a breath of fresh air this year. They go down with their heads held high. Each and every man. From the boot boys to the players to the manager to the board, they have done themselves proud and deserve huge recognition for the fight the put in.

At the start of the season, with a budget that would not be out of place in League One, they were everybody's favourite to be relegated. Their wage bill is just £13 million for the entire season while Wayne Rooney alone gets paid the same amount for his 52 weeks work.

Actually, it is worth knowing that before they were promoted to the Premier League, the vast majority if not every Blackpool player had a clause in his contract that saw his wages reduced to just £500 per week during the close season.

Many of those same players will now in all probability be sold back to the Premier League as the Seasiders gear up for life in the Championship. If they do things right, they could become the next West Brom or Norwich and preserve the life of the club before extravagant spending takes hold.

But when all is said and done, they just weren't good enough. Going forward, they have some very good players, Charlie Adam springs immediately to mind, but defensively they are poor and incredibly naive at this level. In truth, they never stood a chance of survival.

But they knew that going in and deserve huge praise for taking the fight to the last day.

Birmingham City and West Ham United on the other hand, deserve no such praise.

They went into the season knowing exactly what they had to do. With players of international experience, highly competitive wage bills and huge followings, these teams should never be treading water in the relegation zone.

West Ham goes down thanks to being one of the worst run clubs in the league. Gianfranco Zola was not setting the world alight at Upton Park, but his merciless sacking set the tone that would cripple the club for the next 12 months.

His replacement, Avram Grant, was the wrong appointment right from the start. The likeable Israeli may be one of the games nice guys, but he has never done anything in the game to warrant managing a club in the Premier League, let alone a club like West Ham who do have the potential to be one of the league's giants.

In putting Grant in charge, the West Ham hierarchy was then forced to back a busted flush right from the start as results went against them and when they eventually did get the chance to get rid of him and replace him with a manager of real authority and significance, Martin O'Neill. They somehow went public and ruined their hopes as the dignified Irishman refused to do business with them.

Had they acted in January, like West Brom did by replacing Roberto Di Matteo with Roy Hodgson, who knows where the Hammers would have finished?

West Ham is an awful side, there is a real lack of quality in every department of the club and at times it seemed like they were being carried by Scott Parker alone. They deserve to go down more than any other team.

Birmingham City...just fell apart. From winning the Carling Cup in February, Alex McLeish's team just fell to pieces and were ultimately undone by their lack of fire power up front. Midfielder, Craig Gardener was the clubs top scorer with just eight goals this term.

The most disappointing thing for the Blues is the way they were relegated.

From being in a position of relative safety, they literally dropped like a stone. Birmingham only picked up nine points from their last 12 games and struggled to beat teams as their main striking options got injured. And as the fear of relegation loomed on the horizon, the players just caved in and the manager looked hopeless.

In their final game of the season, Birmingham showed why they did not deserve to stay up.

Take Blackpool for instance. They went to Old Trafford and took the game to United and actually tried to win the game.

Birmingham on the other hand, put every single man behind the ball and looked to catch Spurs out with a set piece.

It wasn't as if they even set their tactics out to defend and they didn't do that particularly well because Spurs cut them to pieces. They just didn't attack, they had no ambition and they didn't try. They sat back and allowed Spurs to dictate the game, and it wasn't until they were forced to look for a goal that they showed some kind of ambition.

Unfortunately, their rivals had shown that ambition from the start of the season, never mind the games today, and in the end the footballing gods chose who would survive.

That is the relegated team’s biggest crime, not trying.

You can forgive players who aren't good enough, but you can never forgive a player who doesn't put in an honest shift. That's why people felt sorry for Blackpool being relegated, but not Birmingham or West Ham.

Honesty, it goes a long way in football and cannot be underestimated. Without, you have no chance.

With it, you can accomplish anything.

This article was previously published on Premier League Report.

You can follow me on Twitter  @WillieGannon

Last season, Blackpool were able to stun the world with an impressive sixth place finish in the Championship, after being predicted to get relegated to League One at the start of the season by many experts.

In the Championship playoffs, Blackpool were able to defeat Nottingham Forest and Cardiff City to reach the Premier League for the first time in their history and the first division for the first time since 1973.

After reaching the Premier League, not much was expected of Blackpool and many expected them to finish in last place.

But after a stunning 4-0 win at Wigan to start the season, Blackpool have been one of the best and most intriguing stories of this season.

Throughout the first half of the season, Blackpool continued to find ways to stun the Premier League establishment starting off with their energetic manager Ian Holloway.

With an outspoken style, Holloway spoke out against the establishment throughout the season and threatened to quit several times over actions such as punishment from the FA for putting out a weakened side against Aston Villa in a 3-2 loss.

However, losses such as the one to Villa did not overshadow some fantastic performances, such as completing the league double over Liverpool for the first time since 1946-47 and wins over Stoke City, Sunderland (who still had Darren Bent), Tottenham and Bolton.

Blackpool was also able to record draws against the likes of Bolton, Fulham, Everton, Newcastle, Stoke City and Spurs.

However, a bad stretch between the middle of January and the middle of April that saw Blackpool pick up just six points in a 13 game stretch appeared to be the demise of Blackpool.

But this was before the last four match matches that Blackpool participated in that saw the Tangerines pick up six points put to put them back into the hunt to stay up in the Premier League for another season.

On Sunday, we will see one of the greatest relegation Sunday's in history with five different sides in position to grab the two remaining spots to get sent down to the Championship.

In Blackpool's matchup, they will travel to Old Trafford to take on the Premier League champions Manchester United.

But because Man United have reached the Champions League final, they will rest many starters in their final competitive match before the final.

Obviously, nothing has been easy for Blackpool this season, but if they can register a win at Old Trafford (or even a point for that matter), Blackpool can easily extend their Premier League run for another season and continue to build from there. 

Blackpool vs Tottenham

Tottenham will be looking to recreate the San Siro magic at Bloomfield road against Blackpool, who have been struggling to keep their heads above water ever since the turn of the New Year. The midweek match against AC Milan at the San Siro was a night to remember for Harry Redknapp and his men after they created history by winning against AC Milan.

However, they will surely find it tough against Ian Holloway's men, who performed admirably in their last match against Aston Villa. Further, they will be extra fresh after having not played for more than a week, whereas Tottenham will be exhausted after making the European trip midweek.

The early season form has collapsed spectacularly for Blackpool, and they really have to do something special before they drop into the relegation zone. Only two points separate them from doing so.

Ian Holloway will certainly be boosted by the news that Rafael van der Vaart will be missing for Tottenham. He has sustained a calf injury that will keep him out of the match. Meanwhile, Blackpool has no new injury worries, although their current players seem to be hopelessly out of form, which could be good news for Harry Redknapp.

Arsenal vs Stoke

Arsene Wenger's decision to rest a majority of his first-team players against Leyton Orient in the FA Cup backfired spectacularly after his side was forced into a replay after they conceded a last minute goal.

He is expected to recall most of the first-teamers who were missing against Leyton Orient, which could boost their chances of winning. Arsene Wenger was criticised for the lack of respect shown to the FA Cup, and Stoke will be looking to add more misery to Wenger's plight. Aside from this fixture, Arsenal will be facing five games in 14 days, and any dropped points in this match could severely hamper Arsenal's title hopes.

Stoke will be looking to play their 'brand of football,' which drew much criticism from Wenger earlier in the season. Tony Pulis will be looking to infuriate Wenger even further by adopting negative tactics at the Emirates Stadium. Matthew Etherington is an injury doubt for Stoke, while Johan Djourou will be returning to the Arsenal first team to give some much-needed stability at the back.

Joe - livescoredaily.com - live scores

Manchester United faced Blackpool in Bloomfield Road and surprised many during their match.

The first half started with Blackpool dominating the field. Craig Catchcart scored the first goal for Blackpool within 15 minutes. He scored with a close range header at the top left corner of the goal post.

He was assisted by Charlie Adam using a cross after a corner. The goal left Edwin Van Der Sar surprised and shocked.

Manchester United attempted to counterattack, but to no avail. At one point, Van Der Sar conceded a corner to Blackpool.

D.J. Campbell took advantage to score the second goal for the team. He scored by using his head from the left side of the six yard box. The ball ended in the top left corner of the goal post.

The first half ended with Blackpool enjoying a wide advantage; the second half was disastrous after the team decided it was time to rest.

Manchester United seized the moment and started to dominate in Blackpool's home stadium.

The second half started to pick up momentum.

The last few minutes were for Manchester United as Dimitar Berbatov scored the first goal for his team in 72 minutes.

He kicked the ball with his left foot from an extremely close range towards the bottom left corner of the goal post.

Berbatov received some help from Darren Fletcher who executed a cross. Richard Kingson (Blackpool Goal Keeper) was the one who was surprised and dejected.

Javier (Chicharito) Hernandez took advantage of the weak spot to equalize within 74 minutes. He kicked the ball with his right foot from the box center.

The ball went to the bottom left corner of the goal post. Hernandez was assisted by Ryan Giggs. Berbatov and Hernandez celebrated.

The work started by United was not finished yet as Berbatov kicked a shot with his left foot from the left side of the box towards the goal center.

It was one of the classic examples of a come from behind victory. It has the makings of a surprise present from Manchester United for Blackpool.

The most valued players were Javier (Chicharito) Hernandez and Dimitar Berbatov for their part in this surprise.

Blackpool 2-3 Manchester United

Charlie Adam, earlier today had put in a written transfer request to leave Bloomfield Road in search of a bigger club but it was rejected out of hand by Blackpool hierarchy. The Scotland international is seemingly keen to move away from Blackpool with Liverpool leading the charge to sign the Scottish playmaker. 

It can already be seen that this is going to be an ongoing saga for the rest of this month's window. Holloway has said that he believes that Adam is good enough to play for one of the top clubs in the league, but that he should show some respect for the club that made him the player he is. Essentially Holloway has said he would allow Adam to leave in the summer after he helps the Tangerines survive in the Premier League, but may let him leave this month if their own valuation is met. 

Originally there was a £4 million bid rejected from Liverpool but it would seem now that if Liverpool were to up their bid for Adam then Blackpool may be forced to let their captain leave. 

Holloway revealed chairman Karl Oyston

 had taken a call from the Reds director of football strategy Damian Comolli on Sunday night, which left the situation more confusing if anything, 

"He ummed and aahed and apparently did not make much sense," said Holloway shortly after confirming that Adam would be playing against Manchester United on Tuesday. "If I tried to stop that boy playing against Manchester United he would probably kill me." 

This is definitely a transfer saga to be watched closely up until the final day, but it may be more a case of Adam staying until the summer if the Tangerines' valuation of the midfielder is not met this month.