Wally meets Simon Grayson: Blackpool boss has Tangerines eyeing return to Championship
There are positive vibes at Bloomfield Road where Simon Grayson is working to bring the good times back to Blackpool
Bury could face Football League expulsion by the end of the week
Mike WaltersSports writer
There was only one man for the job when they searched the Golden Mile for the man to make Blackpool rock again.
Simon Grayson won the first of his four promotions – all of them through the loft hatch out of League One – with the Tangerines 12 years ago.
And now he's the darling clementine of Bloomfield Road once more, top of the pile and gunning for a fifth star on his record – rock, stock and two smoking barrels.
A stirring fightback on the 570-mile round trip to Gillingham in midweek installed 'Larry' in the No.1 slot and replenished his mastery of a division where he also won promotion with Leeds, Huddersfield and Preston.
Grayson's first stint in charge of Blackpool ran from 2005-2008 (
CHRIS NEILL/MAVERICK PHOTOGRAPHY)
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In 32 years as a stalwart of the game, last season was the first time, as a player or manager, that Grayson was not an active participant when the campaign kicked off.
Regular slots as an articulate pundit filled in some of the gaps, but he missed it like a bear misses honey.
His enthusiasm for management was not diminished by a 125-day stopover at Sunderland, the shortest reign in the Mackems' history, nor an even shorter one at Bradford (86 days, although this time he exercised his option to walk).
Grayson's spell at the Stadium of Light was part of a Netflix documentary series, 'Sunderland Till I Die,' which provided a close-up view of a club eating itself.
He faced an uphill battle when in charge at Sunderland (
PA)
"I don't regret taking the Sunderland job – it was too good to turn down a big club who had just come out of the Premier League," he said. "But there were so many problems lurking beneath the surface and I didn't realise the scale of the task until I was in amongst it. There were a few alarm bells ringing after only two or three days.
"The documentary had already been agreed by people at the club before I got there, so I had to go along with it. As a series, it was probably a fascinating watch for the viewers, but the way I was portrayed wasn't how I am as a person. Fortunately, people in the game know how I operate, how I work, how I coach players.
It's not nice to see a programme where they announce you've been sacked, but Chris Coleman had 30 games to keep them up when he came in to replace me – and his win percentage was hardly any better than mine, so maybe the problems ran a bit deeper than the manager.
"Documentaries can be edited to show people whatever you want, and I now know how Graham Taylor must have felt when they did that programme about his time in the England job."
The 49-year-old lasted just five months at the Stadium of Light (
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Do I not like orange? But Blackpool's kit has been the stuff of Tangerine dreams for Grayson. In 2007, he led them into the Championship with a back four including Michael Jackson and Robbie Williams.
This time, there is no Elton John or Gary Barlow in defence, but there is a sense of a famous club on the march again.
After the poisonous parting of the ways with former owners Owen and Karl Oyston, including a boycott of a play-off final at Wembley, the crowds are back.
And up in the celestial directors' box, Tangerine dreamers Jimmy Armfield, Alan Ball and Stanley Matthews no longer need to follow their old club from behind the curtains.
Blackpool and England legend Jimmy Armfield passed away in January 2018 (
"The biggest consideration I took into account when I came back wasn't that I had been at Blackpool before," said Grayson, 49. "The club has changed entirely since I was last here 11 years ago, but it's what the future could hold, and the positivity of the owner (Simon Sadler), that made it such an attractive option.
"Somewhere along the way, the connection between the club and the fan base was lost, and I don't want to go into the reasons for why that may have been the case.
"But there is a real feeling that the worst is over for Blackpool. Something had to change, and it has changed – the fans are turning up in numbers to support their team again, and the place is rocking."
Simon GraysonBlackpool FCFootball League One
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Simon Grayson