Holloway's dilemma

Blackpool enjoyed their two hours at the top of the Premier League table last weekend after their stunning 4-0 victory at Wigan. But with a trip to the Emirates to face Arsene Wenger's Arsenal, Holloway faces an important decision, and if he gets it wrong, the Tangerine dream could become a nightmare overnight, writes Alan Smith in The Telegraph.

Does the Blackpool manager stick with his principles by going with the kind of attacking formation he has always favoured since arriving at Bloomfield Road? Or does he err on the side of caution by, first and foremost, trying to stifle Arsenal's attacking game?

For sure, it would be a very bold move to go with the adventurous 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 shape that secured a spectacular 4-0 win at Wigan on the opening day.

With Gary Taylor-Fletcher and Brett Ormerod operating either side of Marlon Harewood, and Elliot Grandin given licence on his debut to support those front lads, you could say that Holloway was going for broke. Only David Vaughan, sitting deep next to playmaker Charlie Adam, could be vaguely described as a defensive choice.

But if Holloway does something similar there is a distinct danger of Arsenal rattling home five or six. You can just imagine clever players such as Andrei Arshavin and Tomas Rosicky swarming into the gaps left by Blackpool's gung-ho approach. The chances created would probably be enough to end this contest before it has begun.

On the other hand, Holloway might take the view that conceding the initiative to Arsène Wenger's richly talented troops is only asking for trouble, and that attack, in this case, really does constitute the best form of defence.

If so, it will still mean the wide lads tracking back conscientiously whenever Arsenal's full-backs, Gael Clichy and Bacary Sagna, decide to bomb forward. If Taylor-Fletcher and Ormerod do not do that and leave their own full-backs with a steady stream of two-against-one situations, the results will be predictable.

Likewise, Adam and Vaughan must keep talking throughout to try to keep tabs on the blur of red and white shirts in their domain. Not only that, once Blackpool win the ball back it is important that Adam finds some space and starts using a very capable left foot to get his team moving in the opposite direction.

If the visitors manage to keep the ball for a bit to mount some attacks, the defenders will get a vital breather as confidence grows within the tangerine ranks.

In their favour, though, Blackpool's preferred formation does at least match up with Arsenal's. With both teams adopting variants of 4-3-3, Holloway will not have to start changing his tactics radically. As for the side's attitude, that is a different matter. A key to succeeding at the Emirates is accepting you will not have the ball for large parts of the game.

Big Brother meets Blackpool

Meanwhile in The Guardian, David Lacey observes that Blackpool are slowly coming to terms with the crazy life of the Premier League.

Ian Holloway has quickly concluded that the Premier League is not all there. After his newly-promoted Blackpool team had won 4-0 at Wigan he interrupted the ensuing fuss to declare that "it's the maddest world I've ever known", adding that he did not understand why everything had suddenly become so important. "It's like being in Big Brother. It's absolutely ridiculous."

Clearly it is not the Premier League Holloway experienced as a midfielder with Queens Park Rangers in the 90s. Then, people just got a bit worked up from time to time. Now football conducts its business, on and off the field, in an atmosphere of constant hysteria compared to which a day in the Big Brother house is about as fraught as an average Sunday at the vicarage.

Blackpool have soon caught the mood. Already the club's chairman, Karl Oyston, has resigned having previously condemned the activities of some agents as he tried to sign players to strengthen the squad. "I expected the landscape to be a lot different and the way that people behaved to be a lot different," he said. No Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more.

As to mad worlds, the Premier League does seem determined to exist on another planet. How sane is it, for example, that one of the reasons for writing off Blackpool's chances of staying up, apart from the fact that they will not be playing Wigan every Saturday, is their insistence that none of their players will be paid more than £10,000 a week. Makes sense. No point in bankrupting the club in a probably vain attempt to buy safety. Only in the Premier League would this be regarded as a pauper's wage, which says more about the league than it does about Blackpool.

And still the foreign tycoons march on into English football's hinterland. Ahsan Ali Syed, a Bahrain-based Indian billionaire, is willing to pay £300m for Blackburn (the football club, not the town) and is already talking about another Real Madrid at Ewood Park. If everyone who has wanted to recreate Real in England actually did so the Premier League would now be up to its eyes in all-white lookalikes, but somehow it never seems to happen.

Blackburn supporters would probably settle for revisiting the Rovers of the mid-90s. Syed is ready to give Sam Allardyce £100m to spend, which might send a tremor of anticipation through Africa but would hardly be enough to buy any reincarnations of Alan Shearer, Chris Sutton or Colin Hendry who had not already been signed by Manchester City.

Sir Alex Ferguson did not mention City this week when he talked about the "kamikaze" spending of some Premier League clubs and only time will decide whether or not they fit the bill.

Should City score a few hits on the flight deck of Old Trafford's ambitions they will be able to boast of squillions well spent. The value for money of a transfer fee, great or small, can only be judged in retrospect.

The £3.5m Fergie paid Nantes for Eric Djemba-Djemba in the summer of 2003 seems trifling now but appeared an extravagance then once the Cameroon midfielder showed what he could, or rather couldn't, do.

Ferguson has raised a few eyebrows, critical eyebrows, by admitting that he had signed a young Portuguese striker, Bébé, from Vitória Guimarães for £7.4m without having seen him play. What could the Manchester United manager be thinking of? Actually he was trusting his scouting system, much as Bill Shankly kept faith with his Liverpool spies when he bought a 20-year-old midfielder from Scunthorpe in 1971, sight unseen. Some bloke called Kevin Keegan.

Holloway wonders why every triviality has become so important. Part of it is due to the Premier League's success in selling itself, helped by Sky's big drum. Nothing wrong with that. Phineas T Barnum did not get where he was by placing small ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the same time it is hard to avoid the feeling that football really isstarting to share Shankly's belief that it is more important a matter than life or death.

Blackpool could do worse than remind the game of a time 71 years ago when they led the league after winning their opening three matches, against Huddersfield, Brentford and Wolves. Sheffield United and Arsenal were a point behind, Liverpool one further back. An intriguing season lay ahead. Then Hitler invaded Poland.