Steve Thompson used to be one of the main bricks holding Blackpool FC together but since he left the walls have been crumbling down.
The assistant manager and former caretaker boss started his coaching career in the Centre of Excellence before working his way up the ranks to help Simon Grayson get his team promoted into the Championship for the first time in 30 years.
Then, only three years later, he helped Ian Holloway’s side reach the Premier League for the first time in the club’s history. While things seemed so great on and off the pitch, Thommo has now lifted the lid on things at the club.
He said: “I used to say to people, ‘this could come down like a pack of cards,’
“Even when we were doing very well, we had the training ground that wasn’t the best, the pitch wasn’t the best. It’s been well documented that the lads had to wash their own kit, including the trialists.”
“The problems were always there but they were just masked by the results. You had staff and players that went beyond the call of duty to get it right but it wasn’t reciprocated by the right people. “
This season, Blackpool Football club has been in and out of the news after more and more scandals emerged from the club. The club has gone through five managers in the space of a year, been relegated to League One, been fined after the fans – having had enough – caused the last game of the season against Huddersfield to be suspended – and the 50-year-old says its sad to watch from the outside now.
“When you see the pitch now – there is no excuse to have a pitch like that,” Thompson added.
“It’s so sad, it just looks like the club has had it’s heart ripped out of it. Theres a reason why all these thousands of fans are not coming back.”
With only a 6% winning record at the end of the seasonm manager Lee Clark handed in his resignation and the former caretaker manager believes it will be hard for whoever comes in next.
“The hard thing now is that fans are not coming back, they are pretty adamant on that,” he continued. “It’s going to be very, very hard for whoever comes and takes over to try and galvanise the club and to try and get the team spirit and the fans back together.”
Despite many fans hoping the dream team of Ollie and Thommo may get back together to help the club get out of it’s mess, the ex-assistant manager has ruled himself out.
“I didn’t leave on the best of terms. Sometimes you forgive but you don’t forget what happens. You never say never but at the moment i don’t think its right for me to go back there, as much as I enjoyed it.”
He added: “I think at the moment, as an outsider looking in theres a lot of problems there and obviously the fans are not happy.
“Theres obviously discontent with the Oystons. It’s just very sad to see that all the hard work the players and the staff did, it has been undone and it is sad to see it has turned out like it has. I mean they’ve been relegated, they’ve no manager, they haven’t a lot of players, and its so frustrating after what we actually did there.”
It is hard to believe that only five years ago the small club in the North West were promoted to the Premier League and Thompson believes that there will never be a group of players like it again. “We had a good bunch of players and they all bought into how we played,” Thompson recollected.
“It was really special times because we had some good exciting players and and obviously they went on to play in the Premiership and four or five of them are still there now so that proves how good they were.”
Sadly for Blackpool things have gone quiet at the club. There is no talk of a new manager or any players coming in.
It is all just a waiting game now.
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