Ian Holloway - better than Jesus?

It's already well documented that the bods at West Ham United are getting increasingly ancy about the possibility of Championship football next season; every second day's football news carries a snippet about manager Avram Grant (he who has an unusual similarity to Baron Greenback from Dangermouse fame) being on the brink of the sack, even though the Hammers are only one point from safety.

But it's a remarkably close battle at the bottom of the Premier League this season; at the time of writing the bottom nine teams are separated by only five points. It's not quite panic stations yet, but several other managers will be feeling a little uncomfortable in their dugouts just now; Mark Hughes has hardly managed to emulate Roy Hodgson's achievements at Fulham, while Alex McLeish's Birmingham have regressed, possibly because he blew the transfer budget on Nikola Zigic, the 6ft 8in circus freak of a Serbian forward. Zigic is not only rather mediocre in the air, but he is not even worthy of the cliche "good touch for a big man" which forever damns the likes of Peter Crouch with faint praise.

On the other side of Brummy, Gerard Houllier's honeymoon period evaporated quicker than an ice cube between Pavarotti's buttocks, with Aston Villa currently languishing in eighteenth place after only three wins from the Frenchman's seventeen league matches in charge. Houllier's former club Liverpool already pulled the plug on the aforementioned Hodgson's life support, but are right in the thick of trouble and have gambled on Kenny Dalglish reliving his glory years as Anfield manager in the eighties (rather than his nightmare seasons at Newcastle and Celtic more recently). Even David Moyes, after all the wonderful work he has done for Everton, is facing a bit of heat. Chucking Moyes now would be like criticizing Churchill's second stint as Prime Minister - after all the good work he did, against all the odds, he deserves a bit of slack, surely.

West Brom, Wolves and Wigan, at least, seem to have expected a relegation battle and, at the moment, seem to offer security for their respected coaches. But it wasn't meant to be like this. The chances of relegation this season were meant to be 33% lower than normal. There was supposed to be a bit more grace, a bit less pressure.

Because Blackpool weren't supposed to be, well, doing bloody brilliantly.

If you are bored, look up 'Ian Holloway quotations' on google, for such gems as "I love Blackpool. We're very similar - we both look better in the dark" and his analogy for winning ugly, "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She wasn't the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee".

The man has a wit that ITV sitcoms simply dream of. He is, also, a miracle worker. For a start, he's made Charlie Adam a star. Charlie Adam, who I once saw sulking on the left touchline at Inverness on a cold Tuesday night in December, being utterly owned by Caley's lumbering full back. Yet he will almost certainly find himself at a much bigger club in the next six months. I know Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and changed water into wine, but I seriously doubt he had the capacity to make Charlie Adam into a Premier League midfield player. That Holloway has done the same with so many other journeymen is simply extraordinary.

And not only that, but Holloway's Blackpool play with a style and panache which makes them the most watchable side in Britain currently. And I include Arsenal in that, for Arsene Wenger shows a degree of restraint in big matches. Holloway doesn't know the meaning of "restraint", in his interviews or his tactics. He is the anti-Rafa Benitez; as the joke goes, "why do Liverpool play two defensive midfielders? Because they don't have a third in the squad". Now it could be paraphrased into "Why don't Blackpool play four strikers? Because they only have three to pick from".

They got their backsides handed to them in heavy away defeats by Arsenal and Chelsea early in the season, yet they bounced up and have won eight games. It was said of the ultra-defensive Greece of Euro 2004 that coaches had forgotten how to play against such old-fashioned defensive tactics. I wonder whether, circa 2010-11, they have forgotten how to play against the old-fashioned "lets score more goals than you" that Blackpool adopt.

There's definitely a part of me that worries that the Seasiders might yet crack, Hull-style, and slide back down towards oblivion. This season 40 points will probably be required to stay up. But they are already only 12 short of that, with 18 games left. The bookies have Blackpool odds-on to stay up; if they do, only the supporters of the relegated teams will begrudge them.

And most importantly, if they stay up then it means post-match interviews with Holloway on Match Of The Day next season, which are better than most of the highlights.

L.