29 September 1951 Blackpool 2 Manchester City 2
Brilliant Trautmann foils victory bid
THE OLD FAILING
Blackpool 2, Manchester City 2
By “Clifford Greenwood”
AN all-Lancashire match, plus the Illuminations, plus a fine day, nearly always equals a sell-out in Blackpool football.
One was promised early in the day for the Manchester City match this afternoon.
Outside in the streets the queues half an hour before the kick-off were up to 100 yards long outside all the entrances to the east side terraces and the embankment, The Kop was packed to the top tiers, with few signs of movement on its edges, and in the south-east corner boys by the score were spilling over the barriers.
There were 35,000 people in the summer sunshine of this autumn day with 10 minutes to go.
Both clubs announced “No change,” the City retaining their faith in the 11 men who, according to common report, were unlucky to lose their last two games with such formidable foes as Manchester United and Arsenal.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL. - Farm; Shimwell, Wright (J.); Fenton, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, Mudie, Mortensen w. J. Slater, Perry.
MANCHESTER CITY. - Trautmann; Phillips, Hannaway; Paul, Rigby, McCourt; Meadows, Hart, Williamson, Westcott, Clarke.
Referee: Mr. E. R. Hill (Chester).
THE GAME
First half
Eric Hayward lost the toss and Blackpool defended the south goal.
First incident was a corner won unexpectedly out on the right flank in the wing forward position by W. J. Slater after he had chased Mortensen’s neat lobbed pass.
The corner was worth what all Blackpool corners these days seem to be - nothing at all.
Still the game moved almost without interruption on the City’s goal. In fact, except when Hayward twice halted raids with good headed clearances, the City forward line, almost marooned from its half-backs made scarcely any progress.
The football was fast, but had no particular drama.
It required a half-back to make the first shot worth calling a shot, young Ewan Fenton moving fast to Perry’s pass, leaving Westcott standing, and hitting a ball which the tall, fair-haired Bert Trautmann, the German goalkeeper, held crouching as he leaped forward to meet it.
Trautmann was in action again immediately, casting himself sideways to field brilliantly a ball shot at him by Perry after the South African had taken Kelly’s squared pass in an open space and swerved away from a full-back into a shooting position.
It was almost continuous pressure by Blackpool. In it Bill Slater was slow to one chance, and Mortensen, probably deceived by the ball’s bounce, lost another comparatively close in.
ON THEIR OWN
Except when Jackie Wright fell desperately in front of John Hart the Blackpool goal was scarcely ever menaced in the first 10 minutes.
The City goal, by contrast, was almost continuously under pressure, if seldom under fire until the ball bounced so high from a long downfield clearance that Mortensen and Perry were left almost alone within shooting range of Trautmann.
The centre-forward left it unselfishly to the wing forward, who headed it fast into Trautmann’s hands.
Fifteen minutes had gone before the first open position presented itself. Then, as Slater squared a pass to the waiting Mudie, the little inside-right stabbed his shot wide of a post.
But in the 18th minute Blackpool went - almost inevitably, I think - in front.
A headed clearance - one of several by Eric Hayward opened the move.
Kelly took the bouncing ball, stabbed it forward, hit the referee with it, darted fast to the ball as it cannoned back to him, and passed it on to Mudie.
One pass by the inside-right split the buckling City’s defence wide open. Into the gap raced MORTENSEN, who shot fast and low away from the falling Trautmann before a man could close the gap to challenge him.
This was a lead which good football and almost continuous pressure deserved.
FARM’S LEAP
Yet it was a lead which was nearly lost within three minutes - and lost to a full-back, young John Hannaway shooting from far out a rising ball which Farm held in a big leap lurching backwards over the line with it for a corner.
The City were in the game a lot afterwards. Farm was a shade slow out to one forward pass which in the end Hayward had to hook away from Williamson almost on top of the goalkeeper.
For a time the City’s raids went on. In one Clarke ran away from Shimwell before crossing a ball which Dennis Westcott headed over the bar in a big leap.
FASTER TACKLING
Blackpool were, in fact, outplayed for a time, and yet the City seldom seemed able to make a shooting position.
It was almost continuous pressure, but it led nowhere against a Blackpool defence faster into the tackle than it has been in a few recent home games.
Yet, with 32 minutes gone the City made it 1 - 1, and, I think, were entitled to.
A direct right wing raid made the scoring position.
A pass forward to Meadows. A pass inside to Westcott. The ex-Wolf squared this second pass across the face of a gaping Blackpool goal.
Waiting for it was JOHN HART, left with an almost open line in front of him and the ball crossing him.
With no man near him, the inside-right hooked that ball fast over the empty line.
Whereupon, in the next two minutes, this awakened City front line raided at such a pace, tearing the Blackpool defence so wide open, that it might have had two goals inside the next 60 seconds, and even another three minutes afterwards.
CHANCES MISSED
Clarke volleyed the ball high over the bar, and directly, with Blackpool’s half-backs and full-backs in confusion, Hart lashed excitedly at a bouncing ball and missed another chance.
Nor was that all, either, in this sudden raging storm, for Williamson was racing into another shooting position as Shimwell crossed his path and halted him in a desperate sliding tackle.
That City goal had introduced drama at last into a half which had not possessed a lot of it.
No sooner, in fact, had these fast, furious City raids been repelled than it was the City’s goal which was near downfall.
It was a goal which would have fallen five minutes before half-time if Trautmann had not made a brilliant flying dive at Fenton’s great cross shot and held the ball to a thunder of cheers as he fell to his right.
Within a couple of minutes, too, this City goal was in peril again.
OUT OF GOAL
Rigby leaped at a flying ball, headed it out of the hands of his own goalkeeper, leaving Trautmann yards away from home as Mudie jumped at the loose ball, and headed it inches away from a post with the City’s defence in disorder.
Another minute, and City were near to taking the lead in a fast breakaway which had the Blackpool defence reeling in front of it, but Fenton was a split second too fast for Westcott as the inside-left shot at an empty goal and had his shot deflected away for a corner.
MATTHEWS’ PASS
Another minute, and as the half ended in drama Matthews, racing on to a loose ball, eluded two men before stabbing it forward to Mortensen as Trautmann hurled himself bravely at the leader’s feet.
It had been a strange half. For half an hour it had been merely another game. During this last 15 minutes the forwards had been dictating it everywhere.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Manchester City 1.
Second half
A fast Blackpool attack opened the half. It nearly brought a goal too, Mudie advancing 20 or 30 yards before releasing a pass to Mortensen which was desperately intercepted.
The raid continued until Perry hesitated that split second too long on the ball, and lost it.
Blackpool had the City in retreat for a time afterwards.
Kelly once worked the ball perfectly to his shooting foot before hitting a ball which Trautmann fielded in a heap, with Phillips crumpled up in front of him on the edge of the penalty area.
The right-back had to go over the line for attention, and when he came back to the game it was as a limping right wing forward.
CITY IN FRONT
Yet in spite of this reduction in their forces the City were again in command of the game for minutes and in this pressure Blackpool’s defence began again to lose a lot of its order.
Thirteen minutes only of the half had gone when the City went in front. It was a goal in two moves, and a good goal, too.
One pass alone, glided into a gaping defence, was sufficient to create the position.
Williamson made the pass downfield. DENNIS WESTCOTT chased it, reached it a split second before the advancing George Farm, and hooked it slowly away from the goalkeeper, leaving Hayward vainly to chase it as it rolled on and on before almost crawling inside the far post.
Again, for the third successive home match, Blackpool were losing a game which earlier they had been threatening to win by a distance.
ONE FOR SLATER
Yet Blackpool were losing it for only three minutes. For in the 16th minute of the half a goal came - a goal almost out of the blue.
It was made to appear so simple. There was a raid on the left created by Kelly, a long flying centre in from this wing by Perry.
Up to it rose W. J. SLATER, headed it away, far away from Trautmann, who was impeded by one of his full-backs.
Still a goal it was, a goal sufficient to keep Blackpool in the game, even if it was the City who continued to make the direct raids.
Yet Blackpool won a corner, or to be exact, the prancing, swerving Matthews won it unaided.
BRILLIANT SAVE
And after the corner had been cleared a pass by Slater found Mortensen in an open space.
The centre-forward, taking his time over it, shot so fast towards the far wall of the net that Trautmann had to dive at the flying ball to reach it, hold it and clear it for a save as brilliant as I have seen this season.
It was either team’s game with 20 minutes left. The City, even with only 10 fit men - Phillips roaming between the wing-half and wing forward positions - were still definitely in it.
Twice Bert Trautmann was in brilliant action again, hurling himself into the path of a thunderbolt shot by Perry after Matthews had left every man on the other wing trailing, and a couple of minutes later punching over the bar a rising shot by that shooting half-back, Fenton.
Not that the City were out of the game as the end approached, for twice inside a minute Hart shot a ball which Farm parried superbly before Clarke nearly hit a hole in the side net.
Ten minutes to go and still anybody’s game.
Backwards and forwards it surged afterwards. There was little in it.
Attacks by the City and Blackpool were repelled until, from Matthews’ pass, and a split second after the offside whistle had gone, Mortensen hooked in fast a ball which brushed the face of the bar.
A draw began to seem inevitable.
Three minutes to go and Blackpool nearly won.
A fast raid on an unprepared defence left Mortensen where he loves to be, chasing a ball into an open space.
He shot, and Trautmann, in another gigantic leap, reached the rising ball and beat it out to establish himself as the game’s No. 1 hero.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 2 (Mortensen 18, Slater 61)
MANCHESTER CITY 2 (Hart 32, Westcott 58)
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
ANOTHER home point was lost by Blackpool today. That makes the eighth in six games.
Nobody could seriously dispute that City earned this one. It was earned by a lot of sweat and toil by Bert Trautmann, a goalkeeper-and-a-half today, and by football which had little elegance in it but was at least direct.
This point won, too, by a team which had only 10 fit men for half the game.
Blackpool are still a team good, bad and indifferent, all within the space of a few minutes.
The defence was again inclined to go a little desperate under pressure, but except for brief periods of panic was steadier than it has been.
The half-back line had little wrong with it, and, in fact, Hugh Kelly had his best game for months.
OLD STORY
Again it was the old familiar failure at inside forward which took half the punch out of the front line.
Stanley Matthews repeatedly had his flank of defence in a tangle, and Stanley Mortensen, too, often made for others the chances which others seemed unable to make for him.
An Allan Brown at his best would have made a lot of difference.
There were 33,858 at the match. They saw a patchwork game which also had its drama.
ONE - SIDED AFFAIR
AN accident happened to the big bass drum in the Blackpool ex-Service Men’s Band as it was playing before the Manchester City match at Bloomfield-road this afternoon.
The band was giving its interpretation of the old Blackpool signature tune “Yes, we have no bananas” when the drummer’s stick went through one side of the drum.
The drummer continued with one stick only.
By Clifford Greenwood
GOALS, when Blackpool and Burnley meet, are about as scarce as strawberries in December, writes Clifford Greenwood.
There may at last be a glut on the market at Turf Moor next weekend. But it is improbable. It is so improbable that not for the first time one goal may be sufficient to take the points on a ground where since the war Blackpool have yet to win - and yet even to score.
That famous defence-in-depth game which has been a Burnley speciality - and good dividends it has paid, too, however negative may have been a lot of the football which was its by-product - has repeatedly held a Blackpool front line.
It was a goalless draw in this match last year after Burnley a week earlier had perpetrated their famous daylight larceny act with a couple of goals in the last five minutes to win 2-1 at Bloomfield-road.
There was not a goal in it, either, in 1949-50, and as it was 2-0 for Burnley a year earlier and 1-0 in 1947, which was the first of the postwar meetings, the astonishing fact is revealed that Blackpool have since the war played for six hours in First Division football at Turf Moor and have yet to score a goal.
That, obviously, is both a compliment to the capacity of the Burnley defence and a revelation of the singular incapacity of a Blackpool attack on this ground where next week’s match is to be played.
Obviously, the law of averages being what it is, an end must come some time to this Blackpool goal famine, and as the Burnley defence is these days betraying a few signs of the March of Time the end may come next Saturday.
It would not be before time, either.
IT’S TOO EARLY FOR DEEP DEPRESSION
M y reply to a correspondent
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 29 September 1951
THE OTHER DAY I WROTE A LETTER AND NEVER POSTED IT. IT WAS AN ANSWER TO A CLEVELEYS CORRESPONDENT, WHO, WITHOUT BEING ALL THAT CAUSTIC ON THE SUBJECT, CONFESSED THAT HE HAD MADE A LITTLE BET THAT BLACKPOOL WOULD FINISH AMONG THE FIRST DIVISION’S LAST EIGHT CLUBS THIS SEASON.
It was not an anonymous letter. If it had been it would not even have been read, for it is my custom nowadays to cast unsigned letters into the oblivion of the wastepaper basket, after a glance has revealed a nom-de-plume and nothing else at their foot.
This correspondent, however, had signed his name and given his address, and did not even ask that it should not be revealed if his letter were published, a reasonable request which is no reflection on the writer’s integrity and is always honoured by “The Gazette.”
THE WRITER, however, had A not given the number of his house in Victoria-road, and as it could not be traced through the sources customarily employed the reply, which, without a number, might never have found him, was not posted.
But I still think it should be read. For it is, if in different words, the answer I have written to a dozen or two correspondents, who, also in different words, have expressed grim forebodings about Blackpool’s immediate future.
Siqninqs if—
THAT accusation, therefore, A being disposed of, I continued: “My own view is that it is too early yet to express an opinion one way or the other on Blackpool’s future, football being the unpredictable game it is and football teams being such unpredictable quantities.
“But I agree that according to present indications new players may soon be required and the reserve eleven may not be able immediately to supply them.
“That, I understand, is the general opinion at Bloomfield-road, too, and I am assured that the club are prepared to spend on new material if it can be found. The problem is to find it.
“I should say, nevertheless, without being a betting man myself, that you will lose your bet.
The odds must be against you.
Blackpool have won exactly as many points from the first 10 games this season as were won from the first 10 last season - and Blackpool finished last time third in the Division table.”
The decline
ONE has to admit that a lot of Blackpool’s football this season has not been recognisable as the football that the team of the second half of last season played.
It is not, I think, sufficient to attribute this decline entirely to the absence of Harry Johnston and Allan Brown, even if without the fighting defiant qualities of the one and the constructive football of the other there has not been the firm resistance in defence or the variety and punch in the attack which there was when both were on active service.
The influence exercised by such football as Brown plays at his best is revealed by a little analysis which shows that the Blackpool forwards scored 34 goals in the 15 First Division games he played before he was disabled at Huddersfield last season, and that in the 14 which Blackpool have played since the goals total has been a mere 19.
18 in 15
AND it is a fact of even greater significance that Stanley Mortensen scored 18 of his season’s 30 goals in 1950-51 in those 15 games in which the Scot appeared as one of his partners.
Yet not one man, or two men, either, can make such a difference to a team as the difference there has been in the quality of Blackpool’s general game this season compared with the halcyon days of 1950-51.
One could work on the assumption that football is one great big gamble, that the mere run of the ball determines every result.
That, of course, is manifestly absurd. Class, talent, call it what you will, will out in the end. And yet it is little less absurd to assume that almost an entire team can be one of the best in the country in May and become for no manifest reason one of the worst in the First Division before the end of September.
Which is what a lot of people, who apparently have not seen a few of the other sides, are calling Blackpool today.
Call it escapism, but it will, I think, be good for the soul, to say nothing of the blood pressure, to sit back and watch next Wednesday afternoon (3-0) a Blackpool team play the Oxford University tourists.
There will be nothing at stake in this match, and, as a consequence, the football may have a poise and an elegance about it which are two qualities League football seldom seems able to afford.
Novelty
And as in the cast there will be such notabilities in amateur football as B. R. Brown, the amateur international goalkeeper, and J. Maughan, a full-back who was with him in the defence of the Pegasus club when the Amateur Cup was won by this Southern team last season, there should be plenty of interest in the game.
By Clifford Greenwood
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Browell view
NOT everybody in these parts is in the doldrums about Blackpool’s recent loss of points.
Talk to Tommy Browell, the former Blackpool forward, one of the greatest opportunists of his generation from his days as “Boy” Browell at Hull until his career ended at Bloomfield-road, and he will say - as the other day he said to me - “What’s all the panic about?
This team’ll come again. “I’ve played the game, and I know that there comes a time when every team has its black patch. Blackpool’ll come out of it. You mark my words.” I’ll mark them, Tommy, and quote you when it happens as one who cannot be numbered among those of little faith.
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Questions three
Two questions I should like Why in the name of sanity are
(1) Derby County playing such an accomplished forward as Johnny Morris in the half-back line?
Why, no less in the name of sanity, have
(2) Sunderland, whose defence has been notoriously unstable during recent years, ever transferred such a centre-half as Ken Oliver to Derby.
And a third for good measure is
(3) If the Derby people who were making scorn of Johnny Stamps in last weekend's Blackpool match were among those who cheered him to the skies when in this game last season - and it was only exactly a year ago today - he scored four times ?
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