Ian Holloway reveals reason Blackpool were relegated from Premier League and teases return to management

Adam departure cost Blackpool’s Premier League place

Halfway through that season in the Premier League, we all felt we were good enough to be there, of course. We picked up 28 points from 23 games. The catalyst for everything was the fact that somebody came in for Charlie Adam. Our chairman called us a ‘stepping stone team’ – if you do well enough, we’ll let you move on.

Liverpool came in for Charlie, they were seventh at the time, and Charlie had a clause in his contract that said he’d be allowed to go to a top-six club. My chairman sat him down and said “can you read? Can you see the table? They’re in seventh. I’m not talking to them”.

Unfortunately, that unravelled everything, because it made me break a promise to my players. The chairman didn’t want to do the business I was asking him to do, with the £6m we’d have got for him. I wanted to give DJ Campbell and David Vaughan new contracts. At that point in the season, we were halfway up the table in our first season in the Premier League – are you telling me they wouldn’t have signed new deals with us? Of course they would have done.

God knows where we’d have been if we had sold Charlie and brought in a few replacements. I was looking at ways we could improve the team as we were a little bit too open. I did things with my full-backs that I’d have done slightly differently in hindsight.

That group of players had this mindset where they needed to prove something to everybody, together. I needed to prove something too, so it was the perfect storm. The fans cheered us on through everything, singing. “This is the best trip, we’ve ever been on.”

Even when we were two or three down, they still sang for us. You go somewhere like Everton at the moment and that sort of thing is not happening. The supporters did exactly what I needed them to do for us. They enjoyed what we did for them, and the identity and brand of football we tried to put out there.

Without supporters, football is nothing. How terrible was it when teams were playing behind closed doors a couple of years ago? It was a sham of a mockery. The whole secret of football is that it belongs to the supporters. We have to make sure this game doesn’t go away from us, to fat, wealthy owners who want to get richer and richer through our wonderful sport. This is our life, that’s where Bill Shankly was right.

Celebrating Blackpool’s play-off win, we broke every rule in the book!

We broke every rule in the book after that final win against Cardiff, because we rammed everyone’s family onto that team bus. Everybody wanted to get back to the hotel, so we had booze from the ground put on the bus. We had the best sing-song I’ve ever seen; everybody was stood up.

My lads have still got a WhatsApp group that they created, including every player from that season, and we’ll still all talk in that, even if it’s just wishing each other a happy birthday and things like that. The team that played most games, the lads who didn’t feature –  every single one of them played a huge part in what we achieved that season.

We got back to the hotel and had a fantastic buffet laid out for us in the evening, and the celebrations went on until the early hours of the morning. I remember waking up at around eight-thirty, opening my door and seeing a newspaper on the floor, which I’d requested. And there we were, Blackpool FC, celebrating all over the newspaper. I’d never felt anything like it, and that’s when it really sank in for me. It was totally incredible.

My world stopped when I went up those stairs at Wembley and looked at that horseshoe of tangerine. It was like time stood still for me; it was one hell of a moment. Those lads will be fondly remembered for what they did that year, and quite rightly so, too.

A return to management? Never say never…

I’d never say no to another job in management, it all depends who’s asking. It’s about having a chance somewhere, and what does a club want from me at this point in my career? Can I go in somewhere and perform miracles? Yes, of course I can. I went to Millwall and in my first season there, they’d only won something like six games before I took over in January. I went in and we went unbeaten in our last eight games to stay up – people only think about that second season; they don’t realise what happened in the first year.

When I went to Grimsby, they were in the bottom two and looked like they were getting relegated. I think we were up to ninth by the end of the season and the crowd had gone from 4,000 to 6,000 – we were all having fun and it was great. But unfortunately when Covid kicked in, I lost 11 out of 22 people, and I just couldn’t replace them to the same standard.

It’s a wonderful game, though. I miss it every day. I miss the people, the banter, everything. But I’ve also got other things that I enjoy doing, so it would have to be the right club for me. If a team comes in and says they’re interested in me, then great, but I’m not going to be throwing my name in for anything any time soon.

My daughters couldn’t understand why I lost my job at QPR – they thought the club was mine!

My daughters were still so young when I was managing at QPR the first time, they didn’t really understand what was going on. The day I came home and had to explain that I’d lost my job at Queens Park Rangers, they just started crying. They thought Queens Park Rangers was mine! They did not realise that I could lose that job. They thought that daddy’s job was QPR, so it was really difficult for them to get over. They’ve actually never watched a game since –  it absolutely destroyed them. They used to go to games and loved it. But they were devastated, when they went back into school, kids were teasing them that their dad had got the sack. They never got involved with it again after that.

And my son, by the time he was 19, said: “Dad, I don’t want to go to Plymouth with you. Why am I doing it again? Why can’t I stay in Bristol?” You drag your kids all the way around the country with you for your job. It gets a little easier when they get older, but my wife and I have lived in 48 different houses. In the end we set ourselves up a base and then rented wherever I was working, because as a manager you absolutely have to be the first one in and the last one out. That’s what it’s all about. My wife, in the end, just said to me “please, don’t become the result.” She was sick and tired of me being the 2-0 defeat or the 2-1 win, she just wanted me to stay on one level – but it’s almost impossible to do, to be honest with you.

A message to Frank Lampard

As I’m sat here now, I’m thinking about a wonderful young fella – compared to me – in Frank Lampard. He goes in at Derby and takes them into the play-off final. Then he gets the Chelsea job – his club, where he was idolised, and now look at him? I felt he was unfairly sacked there; he brought through so many youngsters and tried to bed them into the first team.

Then he gets the Everton job, keeps them in the Premier League last year, which he said was his proudest moment in football, and now, just a few months later, he’s gone. Problems were piling up at Everton’s door long before Frank got the job, but where does it leave him now? All I’m asking of him is that he’s as strong a person in management as he was in football, and that he keeps believing in himself, because I believe we need the likes of him and his ideas to take us forward.