Source: TheGuardian
Blackpool's Neil Critchley: 'I wouldn’t have left Liverpool unless it was for something special'
After seven years at Anfield culminated with two games deputising for Jürgen Klopp, Blackpool’s manager can’t wait for life to get back to normal at Bloomfield Road It is almost five months since Neil Critchley swapped Liverpool for League One but, by now, he envisaged having more than two matches and a handful of training sessions under his belt. His Blackpool reign was 11 days old when the music stopped on their season in March. “It has been incredibly bizarre,” says Critchley, who had worked in Liverpool’s academy for seven years, developing a reputation as one of the most respected coaches in the game after being headhunted by the then manager Brendan Rodgers.Leaving Liverpool, Critchley says, was a difficult decision, one he mulled over with the academy director, Alex Inglethorpe, but he felt it was time to step out of the shadows and test himself as a manager, an ambition that has grown since he started coaching in his late teens, going on to work at Crewe under Steve Holland, now England’s assistant manager, before joining Liverpool. Critchley compares his education to a “Harvard degree in coaching” and there is audible excitement about the task at hand. Related: Blackpool owner Simon Sadler: 'I think clubs will go like dominoes' Related: Blackpool 4-3 Bolton Wanderers: 1953 FA Cup final – as it happened Continue reading......read full article
