10 September 1949 Aston Villa 0 Blackpool 0
The Villa survive raging pressure, draw
SLATER PLEASES
Aston Villa 0, Blackpool 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
BLACKPOOL FIELDED AN UNFAMILIAR FORWARD LINE AT VILLA PARK THIS AFTERNOON.
Last night Willie McIntosh complained that the knee he hurt a week or two ago was inflamed, and as he was still not considered, on his own admission, 100 per cent, fit at noon today the line had to be reshuffled, leaving only the wing forwards in the positions in which they played against Newcastle United on Monday.
Stanley Mortensen became a centre-forward again, and with Andy McCall crossing to the vacancy at inside-right, W. Slater had his first game in the First Division.
It was the first time an amateur had played for Blackpool since W. W. Parr, who was later killed on active service as an RAF pilot, wore a tangerine jersey in the mid-30’s.
Eddie Shimwell passed his test yesterday, and had his first game since the season’s first weekend nearly three weeks ago.
That left Johnnie Crosland as 12th man, and he would not, I think, complain about that, for he showed no particular partiality for a full-back position, prepared as he may be to play anywhere.
VILLA CHANGES
The Villa had to play a reserve goalkeeper, Keith Jones, in a team changed in two other positions and captained by Ivor Powell, the Welsh wing-half, who was a guest at Blackpool in war days.
Another perfect afternoon - perfect for cricket if not for football, for it was as hot as ever - had the queues standing outside the terrace gates as early as noon.
Teams:
VILLA: Jones: Parkes. Dorsett, Powell. Martin. Moss (F), Craddock. Gibson. Ford, Dixon. Goffin.
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell. Lewis, Johnston. Hayward. Kelly, Matthews. McCall. Mortensen. W Slater. Wardle.
Referee: Mr. A. Murdoch (Sheffield).
THE GAME
There was little in Winning the toss. The Villa won it, and that was all there was in it.
In the first 10 seconds Mortensen went after Slater’s neat pass and missed the ball.
Ten seconds later Blackpool were near a goal. Con Martin, the tall Irishman, gave a corner unashamedly as Mortensen chased Johnston's long throw - a throw for which the Villa’s defence was unprepared.
Over came the ball from the right flank, crossed perfectly by Matthews. On to it McCall darted, backheeled.
After the pass tore Mortensen, shot a ball which seemed to hit Jones face as the goalkeeper fell forward at the raiding leader’s feet.
The next minute was devoted to restoring the goalkeeper after he had risen dazed from his line.
It was a good direct opening by Blackpool, who, when the Villa retaliated with a couple of patchwork attacks, repelled them both by back passes to the waiting Farm.
VILLA SUBDUED
Once Ford escaped on his own, reached the line with the left flank of Blackpool’s defence standing on an offside call, and won a corner. Otherwise the Villa were uncommonly subdued for a team playing in front of its own public.
A glittering bit of football by Slater, who left two men standing by sheer swerve and superb ball control, won a free-kick for Blackpool as Ivor Powell halted the amateur desperately with a tackle at his heels.
Repeatedly afterwards Blackpool’s passes had a purpose in them which made the Villa’s football seem by comparison almost haphazard.
Johnston hit a squad of Press photographers with one shot, and twice in rapid succession Wardle, served with passes out on an exposed wing, crossed centres which the giant Martin headed out in mid-air.
Slater was playing confident football, moving intelligently all the time into the open spaces.
SLATER SHOOTS
High and wide from a Mortensen pass
When Mortensen crossed a bouncing ball Slater shot high and wide when for the first time his composure deserted him.
All this time the Villa’s front line had been held as if in a vice. Yet in the 15th minute that fervent Welshman, Trevor Ford, went tearing after a down-the- centre pass. It was about the first shooting position a Villa forward had reached when Hayward cut across him with a door-die tackle which dispossessed him at the cost of the Villa’s second corner.
George Farm had not taken a goal kick with 17 minutes gone, and still Blackpool’s front line advanced, building positions neatly with Mortensen always aggressive in the centre-forward position, where, I always think, he plays his best game.
Twenty minutes, and Blackpool were unlucky not to take the lead which class football - and there was real class in it - would have deserved.
HIT THE BAR
Another long throw-in by Johnston, a pursuit by Mortensen, and a pass inside built the position.
McCall shot the ball as it passed him, hit the bar with the goalkeeper still in mid-air, darted to the rebound, worked position a shade too deliberately, and shot a second time a ball which Jones reached and punched out in a dive to his right.
This McCall-Matthews partnership was good. All the time the little inside forward was in the match, making his passes Studiously, racing fast after the ball as it was returned to him.
He shot wide in Blackpool’s next designed raid - and every Blackpool raid still had design in it.
The Villa were not outplayed with the end of the first half-hour approaching, but all their attacks appeared to be patterned on the long downfield pass to Ford, who three times in succession waited for them in offside positions.
FINE CLEARANCE
Martin puts the brake on McCall
Another great clearance by Con Martin who, up to this time, had been about threequarters of the Villa’s retreating defence, put the brake on McCall with the inside-right moving into another shooting position.
Nobody who saw Blackpool labouring without a glimpse of inspiration against Newcastle five days ago would have recognised this team.
Another corner came to Blackpool, forced this time by an astute Kelly pass on a Blackpool left flank which was not as often in the picture as the right wing but which was sound down its entire length from full-back Lewis to the elusive if at times neglected Wardle.
Two more corners on Blackpool’s right wing, with Matthews gliding repeatedly away from the guard of three watchdogs, followed, and Blackpool’s pressure continued.
This was the sort of thing which was happening nearly every minute:
A long clearance by Lewis. A pass forward to an exposed flank by Mortensen to Wardle. Another forward pass by the wingman to Ais partner Slater, who, anticipating it, took it, went on with it, crossed it with a perfect precision for Mortensen to leap at it and head it low into the crouching Jones1 arms.
WARDLE WIDE
From first pass to last not a Villa player had been within 10 yards of the ball until it reached the goalkeeper. And so it continued, Mortensen in another raid creating a shooting position for Wardle from which the wing forward, all on his own, shot wide.
It was becoming almost monotonous reporting these Blackpool raids. It was almost as monotonous as reporting the offside decisions against the tearaway, impetuous Trevor Ford in the Villa’s infrequent excursions into enemy territory.
McCall thundered a shot wide as Blackpool’s pressure raged on. Slater swerved his full-back perfectly before shooting a ball which Jones fielded with complete assurance.
One could introduce the old platitude this afternoon and write that Blackpool for 40 minutes had done everything but score.
The Villa actually forced a corner.
A minute later, after Kelly had cleared it, heading out a thunderbolt shot which nearly felled him, Hayward had to make a desperate clearance to concede another.
NEARLY A GOAL
Lewis heads out from the line
This second corner nearly produced the goal which an outplayed team so often scores when it spurts into a breakaway.
Over came the ball, Ford was on it in a split second, and shot a rising ball. With Farm beaten, Lewis headed out from the line.
Nor was that all. Back swarmed the awakened Villa front line, and in a raging “free for all” almost under the Blackpool bar three shots in a couple of seconds cannoned back off a Blackpool defence nearly stampeded into the loss of a goal in a couple of dramatic minutes.
It had been Blackpool’s half, and yet five minutes’ pressure nearly stormed the Villa into the lead. It was almost snatched again with seconds only of the first half left. Farm losing a back pass by Shimwell and in the ensuing confusion watching the ball bounce out wide of an empty goal.
Half-time: Blackpool 0, Aston Villa 0.
SECOND HALF
A first-half count revealed that the Villa had taken 10 goal kicks and Blackpool only three, two of them in the last two minutes. That showed how the half had gone.
The second half opened as if it were destined to go a similar way. It was a quiet, almost desultory, opening after the Villa’s blood and thunder finish to the first 45 minutes, but almost constantly the ball was moving on the Villa goal, with the dapper Bill Slater in nearly every advance.
There were "fewer incidents in the first five minutes of this half than there had been in any similar period of the first and. in fact, neither goalkeeper was-in action until Farm took Hayward’s back pass with the tireless Ford thundering at the centre-half's heels.
In front of the other goal Jones fielded Lewis’s long clearance as Mortensen vainly chased it. It was all a bit patchwork after the smooth fluency of nearly all the first half football.
MORTENSEN’S SHOT
Yet with seven minutes of the half gone Blackpool were again unfortunate not to take the lead.
This time Slater made the move with a long lobbed pass for which Mortensen was calling. It was a pass which for once beat Con Martin, leaving Mortensen to chase it and shoot a ball which hit Jones' knees, cannoned off them on to the near post, and off the post bounced out of play.
FREE-KICK
Mortensen shoots wide at great pace
A packed Villa defence and a last-second interception of a made-to-measure Matthews pass repulsed Blackpool’s next raid, but others followed it.
McCall, taking Matthews’s pass, shot fast and low into the Villa goalkeeper’s arms. This reserve goalkeeper, Keith Jones, was on overtime today.
Dorsett halted McCall unceremoniously inches outside the penalty area for a free kick which Mortensen shot at a great pace but wide of the far post.
A goal simply would not come and always there was the chance, as so often happens, that the Villa would snatch the lead in a smash and grab breakaway.
It was nearly snatched in one, and would have been if Hayward had not gone down desperately at Ford’s feet with the ball bouncing ominously close to Blackpool’s goal line.
This raid ended, too, only when Craddock shot wide as a rebounding ball reached him unexpectedly.
That gave Farm his first goal-kick of the half, which by that time had been in progress exactly 16 minutes.
Two minutes later and the Villa went near to the lead. An epidemic of back-passing among Blackpool’s forwards and halfbacks presented Craddock with a shooting position from 20 yards and the young outside-right hit a ball which Farm punched over the bar in a great leap.
UNDER THE BAR
From the corner, too. the goalkeeper was on active service again at last, holding under the bar a high rising shot by Powell from a speculative range.
Wardle nearly hit the corner flag after a Slater-Mortensen-Matthews move, as neat as if it had been worked out on a blackboard, had presented him with a chance.
Immediately Mortensen fell under a reckless tackle, writhed about the grass in pain, but came back hobbling after prolonged attention to shoot the free-kick yards wide.
With a quarter of an hour left it was still 0-0, which, in view of all Blackpool’s pressure, was almost fantastic.
Yet within a minute of this last quarter gone it was almost 1-0 against Blackpool.
Craddock suddenly appeared in the inside-left position to leap at and head wide of Farm a ball which the goalkeeper reached with his finger tips and diverted wide of a post into which he cannoned.
Another minute and this Blackpool goalkeeper made a magnificent clearance on the line as a low shot was cracked at him from short range.
It was either team’s game in the closing minutes, with both goals escaping or being brilliantly protected by the goalkeepers.
Blackpool finished with Slater dazed after a collision on the left wing.
Result:
VILLA 0,
BLACKPOOL 0.
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
BLACKPOOL’S football had almost everything in it except goals at Villa Park. It outplayed the Villa completely at times.
Every pass had a design in it. The forwards were always in the open spaces to take the passes. The wing half-backs were repeatedly coming through with the passes, too.
It was the best football, not excepting the Portsmouth match, which I have seen Blackpool play this season. Yet it had not a goal in it.
Superb goalkeeping by the Villa’s reserve. Keith Jones, no luck whatever within shooting range, indifferent finishing deprived Blackpool of both points.
Bill Slater revealed all the afternoon what a born footballer he is.
I called him a complete success for, building up raids or repulsing them, this young amateur had about everything.
Slater had a comparably accomplished inside man on the other wing to co-operate with him, for McCall had his best first half for a long time.
This was a class forward line - and deserved, in spite of its missed chances, to win the match.
Under pressure, too - pressure which became intense towards the end - the defence had a sound match, with Hayward closing the centre and Lewis playing another competent game.
This defence employed the back pass and the off-side trap too often. Otherwise it could scarcely be faulted, for Farm when required was brilliant.
In a sentence - Blackpool should have won by a goal or two.
BLACKPOOL’S Illuminations football season opens next week with Charlton Athletic. There has not been such a lot that was illuminating in these Charlton games at Blackpool since the war.
Chiefly they have been notable for the few goals in them.
There was only one last year, and Charlton scored it to win. A year earlier Black pool won 3 -1, which was almost a goal riot for a Blackpool - Charlton match. In 1946-47 the clubs played a goalless draw.
The presence in the Charlton goal of big red-haired Sam Bartram, who once used to score goals as a centre- forward and has now dedicated himself to stopping centre - forwards and all other forwards scoring them at all, is one reason - and a big reason - for Blackpool’s failures in these games.
But it is about time this goal famine ended. One can only hope that next weekend both teams will be sufficiently lit up by the “Lights” to end it.
BLACKPOOL COULD DO WITH HIM
But Bill Slater has chosen teaching career
By Clifford Greenwood
Football Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 10 September 1949
But the game went on
TEN years ago before the world went to war, it was a strange week in football. Nobody knew what was going to happen, writes Clifford Greenwood.
I went down to the Blackpool ground the day after Britain had entered the war.
Some of the players had left. Several were in uniform before the end of the week. Others remained, asking “Now what happens?”
There were people who said no football would be played until it was all over - and there were those, as there had been in 1914, who said “And that’ll be before Christmas.”
After all that, there was a Blackpool team in the field again by September 16, playing Everton and winning 2-1. This opened a series of club games which included visits by Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Queen of the South, Manchester United and, on Christmas Day, Preston North End.
***
EXCEPT for a 1-1 draw with the Rovers, Blackpool won every match, and by mid-October a north-west division had been established, and Blackpool were playing in that, too, and winning and setting the fashion for those freak scores in which Blackpool teams specialised until the end of the war.
Accrington Stanley lost eight goals at Blackpool in this first wartime season, and Rochdale seven and Oldham Athletic were routed 11-2, with Jock Dodds scoring seven of the 11.
They said it was all over for the duration 10 years ago this week. And actually for Blackpool there was dawning instead four or five years when the Blackpool side became the "Arsenal of All-England,” with an all-star team recruited from the RAF training base in the town.
***
I HEAR that Astley Bridge has become a Blackpool nursery team. Once it served this purpose for Bolton Wanderers. Now Blackpool are employing the club as a recruiting base.
Ray Westwood, the ex-England and Bolton forward, who is still on Chester’s transfer list - he played for Chester at Blackpool in one of the 1948 Cupties - is coaching the Bridge at the present time.
***
Blackburn Rovers would like Suart, but -
BLACKBURN ROVERS are one of the clubs who were immediately interested when the news circulated that Ronnie Suart. had asked for a transfer from' Blackpool.
The Rovers’ interest was greater than ever after the game the tall ex-Netherfield man played at Ewood Park in the Central League early this week.
At Blackburn they are still seeking a successor to Bob Pryde - and as a centre-half they think Ron Suart would be the man. But I question whether Blackpool would part with this loyal player, who for a couple of years has been playing as a full-back when he would have preferred the centre-half position.
Suart has lost faith in himself as a fun-back. But Blackpool’s, directors have obviously not lost faith in him as a footballer, for it took the board only a few minutes this week to decide that he should not go on the transfer list.
The truth is that Blackpool could not afford to lose a defender at a time when so many men in the first team defence have been put out of commission
And the truth is, too, that no club at any time could afford to lose a player of Suart’s character - a man who thinks of his club and plays for his club, all the time, however his game may have gone under a cloud during the early weeks of this season.
His critics should remember that about Suart.
***
WHENEVER these Easthams score a goal - either George or Harry - it makes news. For they score so few. and yet make so many.
Harry Eastham’s goal for Tranmere Rovers which defeated York City last weekend was scarcely impressive, for the ball merely crawled to the foot of a post and off the post crawled over the line.
But it still went in the other line, the newspaper headline, for it was Harry’s first goal of the season, and last season this accomplished footballer from Blackpool - he went to Liverpool on a £1.000 fee before the war - who these days is Tranmere’s captain, scored only twice in 38 games.
***
Pleasing them at Carlisle
NICE tribute to George Dick by one of the north-east sports writers:
Few forwards cover more ground in the course of a match than George Dick, of Carlisle United.
The Scot has splendid physique and the strength which enables an inside-forward to move up with his attack one moment and fall back as an extra halfback in defence the next.
Exceptional stamina is required for the fulfilment o f this role, and Manager Willie Shankly of Carlisle knew the true value of the ex-Blackpool man when he obtained his transfer from West Ham United during the summer.
***
Enough to make you X
YET people keep on filling in football coupons -
Blackpool go to Portsmouth and win and to Middlesbrough four days later and lose. Then Portsmouth go to Middlesbrough three days afterwards and take the points 5-1.
It makes no sense, but it’s football - and early-season football in particular.
***
JOE CLENNELL, who achieved fame in an earlier generation with Blackpool, Blackburn Rovers, Everton, Cardiff City and Stoke City, left his home in Blackpool the other day to visit Ninian Park, scene of a few of his greatest triumphs.
He scarcely recognised the great enclosure which has been built at Cardiff since he was last there 22 years ago, but he did recognise one of his old Cardiff team mates, Jimmy Nelson, the full-back who went to Newcastle and who these days has an hotel in Cardiff.
They talked the sun down the sky, and were still talking when it was about time for it to rise again.
***
THE ARSENAL WAY
ARSENAL have gone to town with their programme this season, whatever may be happening to the Highbury team.
On the desk is a copy of the edition for the Liverpool match last weekend. It is less a programme than a magazine.
There is a two-colour front page in Arsenal’s red and whiter articles, action photographs, reports, league tables and scoring lists - everything except the match result on the day of issue.
Whether the average football fan wants to pay 6d. for his programme, even if he is given such good value for 6d., is questionable. What he is after in a programme, I think, are the teams and the half-time scoreboard key.
But Arsenal, apparently, hold different views, are giving him a programme which is also an illustrated souvenir, and from all I hear the Arsenal public are making it a best-seller ever week.
***
LETTER OF THE WEEK
WHEN the top six or eight rows of Spion Kop are jammed as tight as sardines in a tin whenever there is a capacity crowd at Blackpool matches, there is often plenty of space a little lower down the slope.
I have often forced my way through and found myself halfway up the slope with sufficient room almost to lie down. Other Spion Kop fans will confirm this.
Why not, as a remedy, one, or preferably two aisles from top to bottom of the Kop. Then, instead of filling up from the top, spectators could feed in from the aisles
This would contribute to more effective packing and greatly reduce the “sway” from the top every time the ball reaches the Kop goal area. What about it?
C. THOMAS.
87, Loftos-avenue, Marton.
It’s a sensible suggestion, and, if practicable - and it should be - I would advocate its adoption by the club.
FOOTBALL SHOWS LITTLE SIGN OF IMPROVEMENT
Those soccer enthusiasts who sigh for “the good old days” when English football was the best in the world must have viewed the start of the present season with even more misgivings than usual.
Not only has there been little sign of improvement in the style of play, but much of the football has been marred by doubtful tactics.
An unusually high number of penalties were awarded during the first three weeks, and the accent still seems to be on pace and vigour rather than combination and skill.
Also three First Division players have been ordered off the field.
While admitting that the standard of the game abroad has improved out of all recognition, it is galling to find, as sometimes happens, that our football is being shown up by the style of play that was once England’s copyright.
THE DYNAMOS Moscow Dynamos, when they were over here, demonstrated the value of teamwork and accurate passing, with men running into position and anticipating the next move.
Other Continental sides play a similar sort of game, although not always with the same ability.
Yet in England is it often the case of the bigger the kick the greater the cheer.
Much of the blame must fall on the heads of spectators, many of whom go to a match with the one idea of seeing their own side get the ball into the net more times than the visitors no matter by what means.
Even worse is the excessive amount of booing and slow handclapping which has crept into the game.
BARRACKING
Players are compelled to leave
Sometimes the crowd takes such an exception to one player that eventually the only remedy for the club officials, however much they may want to keep that man, is to let him go somewhere else.
And very often the player is about the one man in the side attempting to play real football. Is he allowed to? Of course not!
As soon as he tries to hold the ball, beat a man and wait until he sees a colleague in position, up goes the cry “Get rid of it” or “kick it.” If he doesn’t obey he gets what is colloquially termed “the bird.”
BALL ARTISTS
There is a case of a club in the South of England which, in recent years, has had two really skilful ball artists. Their lives were made unbearable because their type of football was just not appreciated, and so they had to go, much to the reluctance of the manager, himself a former professional, who knew the value of his men.
Yet what could he do? The players were put off their game by the barracking and could 'not give of their best. One went to a side which soon appreciated his ability and made him their captain. The other revitalised a struggling team.
YOUNG WINGER
At the moment there is a case, farther north, of a youthful winger who has the makings of another Stanley Matthews, but his tricks are not appreciated. It looks as though he might have to go elsewhere or change his style.
Supposing Matthews had been repeatedly barracked in his younger days, what a tragedy it would have been to football and to those people who appreciate the good in the game.
***
Leave a Comment