John Terry earns more than the entire Blackpool playing staff put together.
The Blackpool budget places them hierarchically in the lower half of the third league.
The whole team cost just a shade over a million in total - Man of the Match Keith Southern arrived for a nominal fee, Baptiste for just 35 grand from Mansfield and 4 On Loan players played a part in the Play Off Final triumph.
But Charlie Adam is Riquelme - a cracking player.
There are those voices who suggest that Nottingham Forest should have been promoted as they finished 10 points ahead of the Mighty Pool.
But we beat them 4 times...
...and there is a Clausura as well as an Apertura.
17 Play off matches have only ever yielded two defeats - and one of those was a rigged event.
Glad All Over, Yes I'm Glad All Over...
The biggest prize money on one match in the history of world sport.
Even CNN News featured the match.
The moment the final whistle sounded, the 4,000 seater new stadium was dispatched from Denmark.
Not to be ready for the new season, the Tangerines are Season Ticket-only for 2010/11 - like Manchester United used to be.
And yet the current ground doesn't even reach Championship status - one more airing for the seminal chant: "We've only got two stands, we've only got two stands..."
And as one of the plasterers said: "Every Premier League fan wanted Blackpool to get promoted. Would you rather party on the Golden Mile or get battered in Cardiff?"
More importantly, the borough needed this.
After the Fake Farce of the SuperCasino, eventually given and then thankfully taken away from Manchester in a prime example of New Labour Strategy (sic), the Promenade Development may continue with the prospect of a healthy combination of football fans and prawn sandwich eaters descending on the town.
Blackpool is a larger and more working class version of Benitses in Kerkyra - from a stylish holiday resort for normal people to shagging in the streets and back to normality again.
"A fantastic day for anyone who has ever even dreamed of liking Tangerine" - Ollie.
Feeling Glad All Over...
With my 40 year old moth-eaten scarf and my 20 year old inflatable Blackpool Tower, this years' Home Strip offset, I would suggest, very nicely by the beige Armani shorts, I was a minor part of the Tangerine hordes - 40% of fans are women and girls - it was one huge Wave of Tangerine Rave.
The bloke next to me had had heart surgery and had been told not to attend by his doctors. The first 45 minutes were somewhat concerning. But as he said, "What A Way To Go!"
The late decision to change to white shirts was a typical Ollie masterstroke in the 107 degrees cauldron and the location of the High-Vis Tangerine Masses Raving in the Spring Sunshine offset the royal blue depression on the west side.
The Pool had done their Sun Tzu.
Glad All Over...
Everyone was crying.
Everybody could see it was part of a salvation for a community.
"Ollie is God, the Players are Amazing, the Town Needed This..."
If I have ever been happier than I was on Saturday, I can't remember it.
I probably have had better days but, in the immediate term, I can't fuckin' remember them either.
Feeling Glad All Over, Glad All Over...
I Ain't Happy
I'm Feeling Glad
I Got Sunshine
In A Bag
I'm Useless
But Not For Long
The Future Is Coming On
It's Coming On
It's Coming On
Walking Up And Down The Prom
After Getting To The Prem
And 10 minutes after the Final Whistle, the joy of winning and the prospects of facing Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Bolton had faded enabling Reality to reappear: "Are you watching PNE? Are you watching PNE?"
Shoot some Preston scum...
And hanging from the motorway bridge just where refugees from Preston reach the autobahn hung a huge Tangerine banner claiming: "Forever In Our Shadow".
Sing Softly.
Be Still.
Sleep.
And, without wishing to sound like Father Ted Crilly after he won the Golden Cleric Award, "where are you now Tony Slater with your raggedy in-administration bunch of Nob-Enders?", "and what about you Susan Hill with your sad town of chemical plants and misery?", "and were all those Bradford City fans who celebrated robbing 'Pool of an earlier promotion watching in rapt attention" etc etc etc.
And three things to be considered before the completion of this homage to a town that is, was and always will be a working class nirvana.
1. For those of you who believe that Blackpool are another Derby, Burnley, Barnsley sort of affair.
Nonsense.
Three matches this season against Premier League opposition has produced a 4-1 versus Wigan, a 2-1 victory over Everton and a 4-3 defeat at Stoke after leading both 2-0 and 3-2.
9 goals in 4 games.
4-3-3 with overlapping full backs.
Every attack phased in different waves.
Creating overlaps of attacking options in a rugby-stylee.
2. The timing of the V-shaped decline and recovery that started 39 years ago is perfect.
With the new and unanimous UEFA objectives to flatten the hierarchy of free market abuse in football, well managed clubs like Blackpool with sound finances will be able to battle on a more level playing field.
In the Premier League!
OMG :))
3. And, most importantly, we currently sit one place outside the Champions League slots.
Just behind Arsenal, Aston Villa, Birmingham and Blackburn :)
But, in that revenge is always best served cold, when Blackpool were relegated from Division Two for the first time ever in 1977/78, they were demoted with the highest points total in history.
And it was Cardiff who sent us down.
The match between Cardiff and Leyton Orient was programmed after all the other fixtures had been completed.
Orient had only won one away game all season and Cardiff didn't try very hard at all to prevent the second one.
32 years to respond to that one, you bastards :)
Totally made up...
And even the setting sun was Tangerine...
Tangerine.
Never orange.
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