Chelsea draw in late bid
SHIMWELL HURT
Chelsea 2, Blackpool 2
THE only First Division match in London this afternoon promised to attract another 50,000 or 60,000 people to watch a Blackpool team that has been packing them into every ground wherever it has played this winter.
There were long queues at the Stamford Bridge gates as early as noon. Mounted police were out again to marshal the swarms milling outside every turnstile half an hour before the kick-off.
Eric White, the Scottish fullback, who has put himself in the fashion by asking for a transfer, had his first game of the season in the Chelsea defence as Danny Winter’s deputy.
Blackpool fielded a team shuffled in four positions after the Preston North End defeat.
CHELSEA: Medhurst: White, Bathgate, Machin, Harris, Goulden, Campbell, Bowie, Armstrong, Walker, Jones.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace: Shimwell, Suart, Farrow, Hayward, Johnston, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, McCall, Munro.
Referee: Mr. G. S. Blackball (Wednesbury).
THE GAME
Mortensen soon had the crowd excited, zigzagging into the inside-left position, lobbing the ball over the head of the advancing full-back and giving Munro a ball which the wing forward
hooked into the jaws of the Chelsea goal, where Bathgate cleared off the line.
Blackpool's early pressure continued. Another left-wing centre bounced unexpectedly high off the sodden turf, so high that even McIntosh, tall as he is, could not reach it.
JUST WIDE
When Chelsea’s front line came into the game Walker shot barely wide at a great pace from his partner’s pass.
But all the time in the opening minutes iy was Blackpool who were raiding.
Mortensen, who was here, there and everywhere, was in position for Munro’s centre after the outside-left had been given a clear path by Johnston, beat the full-back to it, but missed the angle of bar and post with a fast rising shot.
Blackpool’s football, lit now and again by the magic of Matthews, had a direct purpose.
Mortensen escaped yet again, outpaced two men, shot a low ball which Medhurst cleared after half hitting the ball the first time.
OPEN GOAL
Yet twice in a minute the Blackpool goal might have fallen. The first time, in the eighth minute, Jones discovered himself all alone, half a dozen yards out, the ball at his left foot, the goal open.
For a half second he hesitated. Across galloped Shimwell to take the ball anywhere away from him for the first corner.
Nor had that comer been repulsed before another big chance was lost, Walker shooting over the bar.
BIG MISS
Chance lost in front of empty goal
Four minutes later came one of the biggest misses I have seen this season. From the halfway line and on the right wing, too, Johnston passed man after man, reached the line, squared a falling centre inside.
Waiting for it in a wide open unprepared Chelsea defence was McIntosh. He stabbed at it, hooked it high over the bar with the empty goal in front of him.
END TO END
Another minute and it was the Blackpool goal which was imperilled. In this fast end to end game, Bowie hooked a pass from his partner, and stood surprised as, with a gigantic leap. Wallace reached it in mid-air and held it.
All the time Mortensen was storming into the game in all three inside positions. Twice he forced Medhurst to fall full length to fast low shots flying away from him.
Munro, too, was constantly outwitting his full back, passed him again, cut inside a short, square pass which hit the other full back as McIntosh shot it fast as it crossed in front of goal.
Not for months have I seen a Blackpool forward line playing with such pace and shooting as often.
Matthews and Farrow made yet another position for Mortensen, who sliced a shot across the face of a Chelsea goal which was repeatedly being left open by the scattering of the defence protecting it.
DEFENCE TORN
Three corners in succession these Blackpool forwards won as the pressure continued. At last passes were being given to Matthews, who was tearing the Chelsea defence apart every time he was in possession of the ball.
From another of his lobbed passes Mortensen headed against the bar.
Blackpool’s fifth corner of the half came in the 27th minute. It was seldom that the Chelsea forwards built a raid, seldom that the Blackpool defence was in action.
All the time the Blackpool front line were doing everything but score.
The course of the game was revealed by the fact that it was not until the 34th minute that Wallace took his second goal kick.
Immediately before there had been one half minute of excitement in the Blackpool goal area as Jones raced away from Shimwell.
Suart had to tear fast across from the other wing to close the gap.
In the next minute the 35th. Blackpool were at last in front.
It required a penalty to do it. Munro again had the right flank of Chelsea’s defence moving the wrong way, crossed a low centre.
Mortensen accepted it, fell under a tackle which, without hesitation and without one protest Mr. Blackwell decided was not permitted in the text books.
FARROW was the man for the job, completed it with a shot so fast that Medhurst scarcely moved to it.
If ever a team deserved the lead it was Blackpool, yet inside a couple of minutes it was lost to a great goal.
Almost direct from the kick-off Chelsea raided. A centre was crossed and WALKER hit it as it fell
hooked a wonder shot from 20 yards fast inside the far post with Wallace beaten by the ball’s pace.
It was for the first time all Chelsea afterwards, a forward line hammering at Blackpool’s defence for minutes.
That goal had meant a lot of difference had tumbled the half upside down. It had been a magnificent half, the best I have seen this season.
Half-time: Chelsea 1, Blackpool 1
Second Half
Wallace had to snatch Hayward’s headed back pass from the advancing Armstrong in the first raid of this half.
Mortensen decided to make a lone foray into a massed defence, but a great tackle by Goulden halted him.
A minute later McCall darted away and shot a high rising ball which Medhurst held brilliantly.
A few too many short passes were creeping into Blackpool’s game. Yet the team’s football still had punch in it.
Again Mortensen took a forward pass, swerved Harris, shot a ball which Medhurst punched out for Blackpool’s seventh corner of the match.
RETREATING
Chelsea were still retreating for four out of every five minutes.
Yet, as often happens in this sort of game, it was Chelsea who nearly snatched the lead in the 12th minute of the half as Campbell pursued a loose ball, and with two men unable to decide who should clear, shot a ball which bounced off Wallace’s knee.
That was an escape. Another followed a minute later as Wallace lost a ball which, in the end, with Shimwell laid out low in the area. Hayward cleared off the line of an empty goal.
That little spurt won Chelsea two corners. It was still either team’s game in spite of all Blackpool’s raiding which soon began all over again.
Chelsea, in breakaways, required a lot of watching. Suart hurled himself into the path of a Walker special in one of them.
SHIMWELL ON WING
A minute later Shimwell went limping into the outside-left position, and Munro retired into the full-back line, the smallest fullback, I should think, to appear in First Division football for a long time.
Wallace made a great clearance from Jones as Chelsea began to attack all out with 20 minutes of the half gone. Blackpool’s goal was under a pressure such as Chelsea’s had faced before the interval.
Yet in the 23rd minute of the half Blackpool took the lead again.
McCall opened the raid with a forward pass to McIntosh who had roved on to the right wing. After it the centre-forward raced, reached it on the line, squared it.
The other centre-forward MORTENSEN - for that is what he was all the afternoon - was waiting again.
This time he stabbed the ball wide of the unsighted Medhurst as Harris tackled him too late.
BLACKPOOL AGAIN
Afterwards it was all Blackpool again, even with four forwards.
McIntosh missed a post narrowly in one raid. In another the ball cannoned to and fro almost under the Chelsea bar until finally it came to rest in Medhurst’s arms.
This was great fighting football by 10 men and a cripple. It had Chelsea in retreat everywhere again with 15 minutes left.
Nine minutes from time HARRIS, the Chelsea centre-half, came up, among the forwards and from a corner, headed a goal to make it 2-2.
Afterwards Blackpool often had nine men massed in the penalty area to repel a tearaway Chelsea forward line. Yet in the last minute Medhurst made an amazing clearance from McCall.
The official attendance was 48,421.
Result:
CHELSEA 2, (Walker 36 min, Harris 81 min)
BLACKPOOL 2 (Farrow 35 min, Mortensen 68 min)
It was Blackpool’s best game of the season at Stamford Bridge last season. It was the team’s best game again this season.
From the first minute the Blackpool forwards were a line not only playing the text book football which this line always plays, but fading out no longer in the shooting area.
It was a line with two centre forwards, one was McIntosh who had the line moving all the time. The other was Mortensen chasing the forward passes, shooting as no Blackpool forward had shot for weeks.
There was class in this line in every position. Even when it was reduced to four men in the last 35 minutes, it was challenging nearly all the time a Chelsea defence which might have been routed if it had not possessed a great, at times brilliant, goalkeeper.
Both wing halves supplied the line with all the passes a forward line requires, Farrow completely justifying his reinclusion.
The Blackpool defence had to reveal all the resource it possessed to hold the raiding Chelsea forwards in the last 10 minutes, but that Blackpool deserved a point, and at full strength would probably have won a couple, admits of no question.
“TRANSFERITIS,” YES-BUT NO CRISIS
It may all turn out to be a one day’s wonder
By “Spectator”
THE old football epidemic called “transferitis” has been afflicting Blackpool again this week. It infects every club at some time or other, in the course of their troubled careers.
What causes it ? Sometimes it can be traced to a definite source. At other times, its cause is unpredictable.
Everybody understands why George Farrow asked for a transfer. He was convinced - as half the football population of Blackpool seems to be similarly persuaded - that he should not have been left out of the first team.
So he takes the course which a player even in these days of wholesale regimentation is entitled to take.
He asks to go to another club.
Willie' Buchan had a similar grievance. That also is understandable in the case of a man whose services Blackpool assessed at £10,000 in 1938.
Dick - and Lewis
GEORGE DICK has his own personal reasons which, justifiably he declines to discuss, for wanting to leave the club, and seek elsewhere fame and whatever little fortune there is in football.
Bill Lewis is no longer content at Blackpool because he is one of those men who never will be content while he is not playing regularly. Football is this fullback’s passion. He lives for it.
“If I could only be assured of a place in the second team - but as a full-back, for I am a full-back - I’d have no complaints,” he said when I talked to him one afternoon this week, when, outside training hours, he was still training.
Yes, you can understand the case of Bill Lewis.
Mortensen case
THE headline case of Stanley Mortensen is not so easily understood.
Mortensen had - and still has - no particular grievance, as he admitted when I asked him.
He has, so far as I am aware, always been treated considerately by Blackpool. On him, in public adulation, the mantle of the great Jimmy Hampson has fallen. Everybody in the town respects and admires him.
Only a few weeks ago, with the club’s assistance, there was acquired for him a house on the borders of the Park, where at last, after years in a flat, he and his young wife are making a home of which they are proud.
So why should he want to leave Blackpool?
“Unsettled”
TO that question he could only answer, “I’m unsettled.” Well, aren’t we all, at some time or another?
The only mistake Mortensen made, as I see it, was to disclose to a Pressman the fact that he had made an approach for his release. Immediately it became front-page news, for Stan Mortensen is a famous young man, and one the prices of fame is that everything you say becomes news.
It required less than 24 hours for Mortensen to realise that a contract is binding, that he is under contract to Blackpool for 12 months, and that, unless he could show good cause why it should be cancelled, he was under an obligation to respect its terms.
Board’s “No”
SO, as soon as the board, as firmly as Mr. Molotov, said "No” to his transfer request, he accepted the verdict without complaint and presumably without any reservations.
It may have been - I hope it was - only a one-day’s wonder, after all. It would be wrong, I think, to attribute any particular significance to it.
To assume because of it- and because of the other minor differences - that a crisis is impending in Blackpool football is to manufacture a crisis of which in actual fact there seem to be no visible signs whatever.
It’s about time, I think, that everybody wished each other “A Merry Christmas” and forgot about it all.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 20 December 1947
GRAND YEAR, EDDIE
IT is about time, so I am told by one of my readers, that I gave the praise which he deserves to Eddie Shimwell, I think I have given him it.
It took the Sheffield United back a month or two to settle with his new team, but since he was signed by Blackpool exactly a year ago today he has gained week by week in assurance until he is again interesting the England international team selectors.
They have chosen him already for one trial. If they are seeking a full-back who can clear a ball a greater distance than nearly every other full-back in the game today and yet not lose direction in the clearance- well, this is the man for them.
Many happy returns after the first year, Eddie!
***
ONLY three times since the war has a Blackpool forward scored four goals in a game for Blackpool’s Central League team.
Jim McIntosh put four to his name at Leeds last week. George McKnight twice had four in a match last season - once in the 11-0 defeat of another Leeds team last March and a couple of months earlier against Sheffield Wednesday.
Blackpool reserve must be Leeds’ bogy team. In their last three games they have scored 21 goals to one against the Yorkshire club’s second eleven.
Last - and only - time a Blackpool forward shot four goals in one afternoon in a First Division game was on April 15, 1939, when Jock Dodds took the lot in a 4-0 defeat of Middlesbrough.
ONE of the critics complains that Hugh Kelly, the Blackpool half-back, was barracked by the centre paddock in the Preston match.
I confess that I never noticed it in all the hullabaloo. But if it is correct I would be the last to condone it.
This young Scot from Perth has never seriously let Blackpool down, is as honest and loyal a servant as the club had ever recruited. If he is not yet a George Farrow, and if the public resented his preference to that long-service wing-half they should not blame him.
He plays when he is chosen he doesn’t choose himself. Be fair to a player who deserves encouragement, not abuse.
ONE of the customers at Blackpool writing on behalf of a few of his companions in the centre paddock, dots the “i's" and crosses the “t’s” of my article last week about the neglect of Stanley Matthews.
Admittedly, the England forward was given plenty of the ball last weekend, but, according to this correspondent’s watch, there was one period at Maine-road a fortnight ago when a pass never reached him for 10 minutes.
"You know,” the writer concludes, “that Jock Dodds wants to come back. Do your best and get him back.""
Well, I don’t know that he wants to come back - but I suspect that he might want to. And I do know that Blackpool’s front line requires above everything else a tall heavyweight in one of the inside positions.
PRAISE of Manchester United’s 16-page programme with, the coloured front resulted - in a Hull City programme being delivered in the mail, presumably for purposes of comparison, this week.
A remarkable good programme they issue at Boothferry Park. No other Third Division club - and few in the First or Second - produce one comparable with it.
They even print in it a special Third Division table showing not only the number of points won by each club but the percentage gained out of the maximum points possible.
A FACT which escaped notice: Preston North End won a First Division game at Blackpool for the first time ever last weekend.
Not that the teams have often met in the First Division. This, in fact, was only the fourth meeting.
In the first, in 1937-38, Blackpool won 1-0 by a goal scored by Frank O’Donnell, one of the ex-Preston brothers; in 1938-39 by 2-1 in the last game Tom Lewis, the former Bradford wing forward, ever played for the club, after North End had scored in the first half-minute, and last season by 4-0.
***
NOTE on the Blackpool-Preston match last weekend: Blackpool have played 18 men in the season’s first 20 matches and have only four - the goalkeeper and two full-backs, and Eric Hayward, the centre-half - who have not missed a match this season.
Preston have made fewer changes than any other team in the First Division, have called on only 14 players in 20 games and included on Saturday no fewer than seven who have played in every match.
***
BEST Press he has had since he went to Crewe was given to Louis Cardwell after the Alexandra’s Cup win at Workington. Bob Finan, too, was given a lot of praise for his constructive game in the Crewe forward line.
Manager Frank Hill has never regretted calling back at Blackpool, where he captained the last promotion team, and signing these two.
Now all those people - and I met a few - who said that Cardwell had finished when he cancelled his contract at Ashton and went into comparative obscurity at Netherfield are having to think again.
How much longer is Bill Shankly, the Preston wing-half, going to go on in first-class football?
He played his first game in Preston’s first team 14 years ago and is today nearer 35 than 30. Yet at Blackpool last weekend he was still moving as fast as ever when the pace was beginning to tell on men nearly 10 years younger.
One of five footballer brothers, he was born in Ayrshire, but made his name at Carlisle.
He is one of those men from whose vocabulary the word “surrender” is missing. He never knows when he’s beaten - or when North End are. Such men are worth the big fees which are so seldom paid for them.
JIM BLAIR’S first goal for Bournemouth in his first two months on the South coast qualified his club for the third round of the Cup. That should pay a bit of the transfer off.
Douglas Blair continues to score a goal or two for Cardiff.
Don’t begin blaming Blackpool for transferring these two brothers, The public demanded that Jim should go.
Douglas refused to return to these parts after the war.
But what a grand player each can be on his day.
ALLAN FLETCHER, the St. Annes half-back, who was on Blackpool’s books for a time between the wars - and I shall always think that he might have made a front-page name with the club if he had been retained - is playing for Mossley in the Cheshire League these days.
So is another St. Annes player, Ray Goodwin, young brother of Phil Goodwin, the boxer.
I hear whispers that Allan may soon be in a managership in the Northern Section. In Ray Goodwin one or two scouts recently have been interested.
NEXT WEEKS GAME RECALLS -
A wonder goal at Stoke
A VISIT to Stoke next Saturday will recall the greatest goal I saw last season -the greatest I have seen, except for Peter Doherty’s last-minute miracle goal for Ireland against England a few weeks ago - since the war.
The forward who scored zigzagged 40 yards down on the middle in a quagmire, eluded five men, and in the end walked the ball over the line.
Who was he? Who could it have been but Stanley Matthews scoring the City’s last in a 4-1 defeat of the team in whose tangerine jersey he now plays.
The City had a double against Blackpool last season, won 2-0 to complete it at Bloomfield-road last April.
FYLDE HAS 40,000 POOL "FANS"
THE new “pool ” in Blackpool is spelt “1 2 X.”
Investigations I have made this week reveal that not fewer than 40,000 Blackpool, Fleet wood and Lytham St. Annes people have a line on the football coupons every week. The average stake is 4s.
Four shillings multiplied by 40,000 equals £8,000, which in a 30- weeks season totals £240,000.
Nearly a quarter of a million between August and May.
Every season the figure is rising.
“Has Blackpool gone coupon crazy?” I asked One Who Knows.
“Not a bit of it,” he said.
Fewer coupons are posted out of Blackpool in proportion to the population than in a dozen industrial cities and towns I could name at random.
“In such towns as Burnley, Blackburn, Preston, Bolton, it is estimated that one out of every three people over the age of 21 have between 3s. and 5s. on the pools every week.”
Every week throughout the country at the present time six and a half million coupons are posted by. the public. Agents collect not fewer than another couple of millions.
Blackpool has its own big pool - Empire Pools in a modern model factory in Chiswick-grove, of Preston New-road. It is the biggest pool in Britain outside the mammoth combine.
The chief with his family and small key staff transferred their headquarters from Huddersfield to Blackpool in 1939.
In 1939 there were 40 men and girls on the pay-roll. Today 120 are on the full-time staff.
Two hundred and fifty people, mobilised every weekend, begin checking the coupons a couple of hours after the final whistle in all the big league games, and have the winning coupons listed by Sunday afternoon.
Scattered all over the country, too, Empire Pools, still a family syndicate, have more than a dozen branch offices, all controlled from the headquarters in Blackpool.
Audited accounts disclosed that this firm pays 80 per cent, of its income to its winning clients, and out of the remaining 20 per cent, allots only five per cent, for development, the remainder going in running expenses.
“There's nothing wrong in that, there?” asks the man from Huddersfield. “There’s nothing wrong with pools either.”
Blackpool's opponents have a blend of experience and youth
LEEDS UNITED WILL BE CUP TEAM WITH A REAL YORKSHIRE PUNCH
FOLLOWING ARE THUMBNAIL SKETCHES OF THE PLAYERS OF LEEDS UNITED F.C., WHO MEET BLACKPOOL IN THE THIRD ROUND OF THE F.A. CUP COMPETITION AT BLOOMFIELD-ROAD ON JANUARY 10.
The Leeds team has a blend of experience and youth, and carries a punch that may be useful in a Cup-tie.
JIM TWOMEY, goalkeeper: Irish inter- national from Newry Town, came to Leeds in 1936 and is now receiving a full benefit for really first-class service.
Twice in his career Twomey thought he was “washed-up" with football, the second time early last season after his return from Merchant Navy service when he had severe knee trouble.
Leeds, however, pressed him to come back and this season he is the only “ever-present" in the side.
JIMMY DUNN, right-back: A voung player recruited from Scottish junior football in the close season. Hails from Glencairn: only 5ft. 7ins. high, but weighs nearly 12st.
Good judges think he may develop into another Bert Sproston He is very cool under pressure, and uses the ball well.
JIM MILBURN. left-back: Member of a famous footballing brotherhood. He has not had the best of luck this season, owing to damaged knees, but it is considered likely that he will be back in the side in time for the cup-tie.
Leeds recruited him as a junior from Ashington before the war
KEN GADSBY, left-back: The son of Ernest Gadsby, one of the famous Barnsley Cup sides of pre-first world war days. He toured South Africa with an England side just before the second war.
But he is a bit on the slow side, and Stanley Matthews had a field day against him when he played with Stoke against Leeds last season.
JIM BULLIONS, right half-back: Scottish-born and former Derby County wing-half. Bullions was the youngest representative of the great Derby side which won the cup two years ago.
He went to the same Chesterfield school which produced the famous "Nudger” Needham, of Sheffield United, prince of half-backs.
Bullions came to Leeds three weeks ago at a £7.000 transfer fee.
He is studying to be a mine manager, and has iust secured his deputy - manager’s certificate.
TOM HOLLEY, centre-half: Another son of a well-known international of former days, the Holley of the Sunderland " team of all the talents."
He came to Leeds from Barnsley, in 1936. A stolid, tall, heavyweight pivot of the “stopper” type, he was sergeant-major in the Army in the recent war.
CORNELIUS MARTIN, left-half: One of the most versatile players in the game today. Came to Leeds last season (transfer fee, £8.000) from Glentoran. in Ulster, on New Year’s Day.
Be played for Eire in goal, centre-half and wing-half, and for Ireland at right-back and wing-half.
A brilliant attacking player, he can score goals from half-back, as he did recently, to give Leeds winning points against West Ham United.
DAVID COCHRANE, outside - right: Another Irish international. He came to Leeds from Portadown (Ulster) in 1937.
A lightweight, he is the smallest member of the side 5ft. 4iins. high and weighing 10st. A dangerous shot, but he has not been at his pre-war best this season.
AUBREY POWELL, inside-right: Welsh international who arrived at Leeds as a 16-vear-old from Swansea junior football. Two years later he was out of the game for 12 months with a serious leg-fracture, and it was feared that he might never play again
But the Leeds United trainer brought off a “miracl " and Powell has since played for Wales repeatedly A real marksman, he is always dangerous.
ALBERT WAKEFIELD, Centre-forward: A “local” who hails from nearby Pudsey, where Yorkshire gets her cricketers.
He was signed by Leeds United as an amateur, in 1942. and developed in an Army side which included Bryn Jones and Tom Finney out in Italy.
A sharpshooting centre, he is only 5ft. 8iins. high, but a robust player with a terrific shot in both feet.
JOHN SHORT, inside-left: 6ft. tall, Short was signed by Leeds at 16 years of age. from Gateshead junior football. in 1937. Possesses a Possesses a hard drive.
After being dropped for the side for five successive league games he made an effective “come-back" recently and in late weeks has performed extremely well.
BILLY HEATON, outside-left: Leeds boy who, after experiments, seems to have settled on the wing
are good.
His only handicap is that he is one-footed player but his left foot shots are good.
He served in India during the war toured the continent with Denis Compton’s side.
DENNIS KIRBY, reserve left-half: Just “demobbed” from the Army his home is only 50 yards away from the Leeds ground at Elland-road.
Kirby is young. big and strong and extremely promising, but needs polish.
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