Steve Bruce admitted he was in unfamiliar territory after Blackpool’s 3-1 win at home to Crawley ended a run of eight straight draws at Bloomfield Road.
Leading 2-0 following a brace from Niall Ennis, the Seasiders played an hour with 10 men following a red card for Ashley Fletcher for his part in a clash with Charlie Barker.
Despite the striker’s dismissal, coming after Crawley had pulled it back to 2-1, they saw out the win, which was secured by Lee Evans’ penalty 10 minutes from time.
And although they should perhaps have been more comfortable, veteran boss Bruce was full of praise for their performance while musing on how best to celebrate.
“I don’t know what to do today, I really don’t,” Bruce said.
“We did make hard work of it though after such an encouraging start. We could have been 4-0 up in 20 minutes instead of two. Then, to be fair, they’ve scored and it’s 2-1.
“Before we know it we’ve got a man sent off for bugger all and then it’s one of those afternoons where we had to sit in our shape and frustrate them.
“But on the break, I still thought we were a threat and we’ve come through it, which I’m delighted about, because the lads certainly deserve the win.
“We’ll certainly be appealing the red card, we can’t understand what it was given for, they were both grappling on the floor – and Fletch hasn’t got the genes to kick anybody or swing an arm or whatever.
“The referee hasn’t seen anything and the fourth official decided to get himself involved, so I don’t know what he thinks he’s seen but there was nothing in it, just a bit of handbags.
“Oh yeah, I got a yellow card as well, for the first time in 25 years – I’m absolutely delighted with that!
“I wasn’t very happy at the time, when you feel the big decisions go against you. So for people to get involved they’ve got to get it right and, in my opinion, he was nowhere near right.
“It was a really good team performance, though, I was delighted with their application.”
Crawley head coach Rob Elliot was despondent after his side failed to capitalise on Fletcher’s dismissal, which came moments after they had given themselves a foothold in the game through Kamari Doyle’s goal.
And with work still to do to get themselves out of the relegation zone, Elliot insisted performances of the standard shown will not help their cause.
“It was frustrating today, very disappointing,” he said. “Even before they went down to 10 men we were second best. It was a really poor start from us. We looked a bit shell-shocked.
“They jumped on top of us and we just didn’t deal with it well enough. And then they got the two goals.
“We scored a very good goal to get back in it and after 20 minutes or so we finally kick-started the game, and then there was the sending-off which gave us another leg into the game, but even when they went down to 10 we weren’t able to break them down.
“We didn’t really show that quality and intention of moving the ball quickly enough. And then we talked at half-time about getting the ball in the box and putting crosses in.
“The quality wasn’t there, we didn’t load the box enough and we didn’t move the ball well enough to get into the areas to put the ball in the box, so we weren’t able to give ourselves the opportunity to pin them in.
“I don’t necessarily think confidence was the problem. I think it’s more a case that we just didn’t have that intensity to start with that we’ve had in previous games, that’s got us through.
“I think to be fair to Blackpool they stepped on us and we just didn’t deal with it well enough.”
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