449: Ian Holloway, Blackpool, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game, Barclays Premier League 2010/11 Collector Binder

As you may have noticed several of our posts have focused on players who have had something of an impact on all of our contributors’ lives through their misfortune of playing for Crystal Palace, Grimsby Town or Reading. Some have also played for Manchester United but that might have involved some actual achievement. For today we step off the pitch and into the dugout for a look at Ian Holloway from two perspectives in a collaborative post from myself and Richard Allinson. Let’s see how this goes. 

In October 2012 Dougie Freedman broke my heart. The Crystal Palace legend had led the club to fourth position in the Championship on the back of an eleven match unbeaten run playing attractive attacking football but had decided that the bright lights of Bolton Wanderers offered more appealing career and promotion prospects. They didn’t. Bolton finished just outside the play-off places and two years later Dougie was out of a job. It’s ok, all is forgiven, and he’s now the Director of Football at Selhurst Park.

 

It took a while for Palace to appoint Freedman’s successor and, in fairness, the caretaker team of Curtis Fleming and Lennie Lawrence did a decent job in continuing their impressive league form with wins against Leicester City, Blackburn Rovers and Ipswich Town. Ian Holloway was appointed in November 2012 and took over a side that sat third in the Championship. Two games into Holloway’s tenure they were top of the pile following wins against Peterborough United and Derby County and, despite a loss to Leeds United ending the ludicrous unbeaten run, were in the automatic promotion spots as the year came to an end.

Anyone who had seen Holloway’s Blackpool side in the Premier League could understand the Bristolian’s footballing philosophy was based around outscoring your opponents with defending seen as an unfortunate distraction. This favoured Palace’s 2012/13 vintage with Glenn Murray scoring for fun aided by the scintillating wing play of Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha. The latter’s form attracted the attention of the retiring Sir Alex Ferguson who made Wilf his last signing for Manchester United in January 2013 before loaning him back to the Eagles for their promotion push.

 

Despite Wilf not really leaving this upset the momentum that Holloway had inherited from Freedman and Palace’s form nosedived in March and April leaving them to tackle the lottery of the play-offs if they were to push for promotion to the Premier League. A drab 0-0 draw with arch-rivals (in their eyes) Brighton and Hove Albion was followed by a thrilling 2-0 victory at the Amex inspired by the outgoing Zaha and a Kevin Phillips’ inspired 1-0 triumph over fellow rivals (in their eyes) Watford at Wembley. Holloway had delivered and earned the right to lead Palace into their first Premier League season since 2004/05 with the aim to go one better than every other incarnation of the Eagles’ in the post-1992 top flight and last more than a season.

 

However, Holloway was going to have to do this without the talismanic Zaha as well as an injured Glenn Murray. For the first, and seemingly last, time the Palace board backed their manager in the transfer market and Holloway had some clear criteria for his new signings, namely: do you play on the wing? Enter Jerome Thomas, Jose Campana, Elliot Grandin, Jimmy Kebe, Barry Bannan, Adiene Guedioura and Jason Puncheon. Palace lost seven of their first eight games and, less than a year after arriving, Ian Holloway was gone. Only Thomas, Bannan and Puncheon lasted the season at Selhurst Park and only the latter was still on the books ahead of the 2014/15 campaign. Palace learnt their lesson and steered fairly clear of signing attacking minded midfielders form then on, especially once Wilf Zaha returned to the club following the David Moyes’ debacle at Old Trafford.

 

Ian Holloway left Palace with a 30% win record from his 46 games in charge which is pretty bloody awful for a team that won promotion and sits in the bottom three for the manager’s personal career record. However, it was never boring watching Palace under ‘Ollie’ and he did get us into the Premier League for the first time in ages where we, somehow, remain to this day. Wilf might once again be on his way elsewhere and the club’s form in their last eight games of the 2019/20 season was pretty miserable. I wonder if Jimmy Kebe fancies a return to South London. Over to Rich.

 

Me: “Dad, have you seen Grimsby have sacked their manager again?”

 

Dad: “Yeah, its a shame. We should go after Ian Holloway. He’d be a great appointment.”

 

Me: “It’ll never bloody happen.”

 

As sure things in life go, there are three certainties:

 

1. Birth

2. Death

3. The above conversation taking place approximately every 18 months.

 

However finally, in 2020 before the world went loopy, my Dad got his wish when Ian Holloway replaced the outgoing Michael ‘expletive laden rant’ Jolley in the Mariners’ hot seat.

 

My repeated dismissal of the suggestion of Holloway as the next Town manager over the years was based on one thing: he had managed in the Premier League and could walk in to a job at most Championship clubs, why on earth would he want to come to a club that was in League 2, had no money and is geographically out on a limb?

 

His appointment was an absolutely fantastic one though and credit must go to the much-maligned John Fenty for getting Ollie to Blundell Park. Straight away I was impressed by the way he talked. Yes, you got the quips about signing a contract in a chippie and him ensuring that the club bought Mrs. Holloway a local field to practice her metal detecting skills, but Ollie also spoke knowledgeably about the club’s history. He expressed his appreciation for having the keys to the same office as Bill Shankly, Lawrie McMenamy and Alan Buckley and his desire to carry on their work. It might not seem a big deal to most but to me it just showed a higher level of appreciation of the Mariners’ history than the bog standard “they are great bunch of lads and this club deserves to be at the right end of the table” that we are used to.

 

The external reaction to his appointment also sums up how big a deal it was for Ollie to end up at GTFC too. For a start Sky TV showed up. This normally only happens if they think we are going to get absolutely pumped by a Premiership side in the early rounds of a cup competition. On a more local level, I attended his first match in charge away against Mansfield Town but as usual I sat with the home fans just over the halfway line. There are two reasons for this approach to match day: 1) I can’t be arsed standing up behind the goal for the full game which tends to happen at Town away games and 2) the view is better. I’m definitely more River Island than Stone Island these days.

 

Anyway, at Mansfield we were sat just behind the away dugout and the home fans reaction to Holloway was very telling. For some reason in lower league football anyone that is remotely famous or well known is automatically labelled a “f***ing c**t” so there was plenty of that knocking around. I have always assumed that this tag was used out of jealousy so I took it as a bizarre compliment that we had a man that warranted this title in the hot seat. There were, however, a lot of more rational murmurings such as “they’ve done well to get him” or “he’ll have them near the top in no time.” That said, when the full time whistle went with the scoreline at 1-0 to the Mariners, even the more reasonable voices were straying towards the more industrial description of Ollie’s merits.

 

Discussing Holloway’s appointment with Manny landed at the conclusion that we would end up signing loads of wingers and that it was almost nailed on that Jason Puncheon and Jimmy Kebe would be on the next Megabus to Cleethorpes. That hasn’t quite played out yet sadly, but the admiration with which our new signings talk about Holloway’s influence shows how important he is to the club. Take our new signing George Williams (a winger, funnily enough) who said "I got a phone call from the manager recently, he outlined the project that he's got going on here and asked if I wanted to be part of it, it was an easy decision after talking to him to come up here...” Now what I didn’t know about Williams until he signed was that he was part of the Wales Euro 2016 squad and flicking through his Twitter feed I noticed a message from 49-cap Welsh legend, and former Palace man, Danny Gabbidon who said “Good luck boyo! You will love Ollie and he will love you.” The fact that Holloway’s ex players still talk about him this way is a good sign of things to come and if Ollie can get his current crop of players buzzing as much as the fans are then we’re on to a winner. Also, if we can sign Gareth Bale’s back up then I reckon with a bit of persuasion, Ollie’s charm and a free membership at Woodhall Spa Golf Club we could tempt Bale to take a £15.5m a year pay cut and sign up.

 

Ian Holloway at GTFC then. Ollie’s at the wheel... tell me how good does it feel? Bloody excellent mate.