Blackpool had one Premier League season in these nine, and nothing in it changes more than its ending. In 2010/11 Ian Holloway’s side went down on the final day of their first Premier League season, 19th on 39 points. Take City out and the same 39 points finish 16th of 19, two clear of the drop. Blackpool stay up.
The other eight seasons were spent outside the Premier League. That one season is enough to put Blackpool on the Ledger, among the nine clubs whose fate changes when City are taken out.
They stay up without a single point off City. Blackpool lost 3–2 at home in October and 1–0 away on New Year’s Day, so the rebuild takes nothing from them. Every place they gain is the table moving around them.
City’s place alone would not have done it. The rebuilt table has 19 clubs and still sends three down, so 17th is now a relegation place. Losing City lifts Blackpool one place, to 18th of 19, and that is still in the bottom three. The rest of the climb comes from two clubs above them. Wolves had survived in 17th on 40 points; without City they have 37. Birmingham also finish on 37. Both fall below Blackpool, and Wolves, a goal ahead of Birmingham, are the club on the wrong side of the line.
2010/11
The same final day, a different line
Nothing about Blackpool’s last afternoon changes. They lost 4–2 at Old Trafford. Birmingham, the League Cup winners, lost at Tottenham to a Pavlyuchenko winner in injury time. Wolves lost 3–2 at home to Blackburn and survived anyway. None of those games involved City, so every one of those results stays in the rebuilt table.
What moves is where the line falls. For real, 39 points left Blackpool 19th and down. Without City, 39 is 16th, two points above Wolves on 37. The two clubs finish on opposite sides of the same line. Nobody played more league games for Wolves that season than Matt Jarvis, with 37; in this table his club go down.
Blackpool’s captain was Charlie Adam, who played 35 league games, 34 of them as a starter. David Vaughan also played 35. In January, with Blackpool still a Premier League club, Liverpool bid £4.5m for Adam and were turned down. On this page his season ends 16th, above the line.
2011/12
The year after, for real
The rebuild takes City’s games out and moves nothing else, so what followed the drop is simply what happened. Blackpool lost Adam and Vaughan in the summer after it. They finished fifth in the Championship, then lost the play-off final 2–1 to West Ham on 19 May 2012, one game from going straight back up.
Each rebuilt table ends with its own season, and this one leaves Blackpool above the line. What a club that had just survived would have done that summer is something no table can show. Would a second Premier League season have kept either of them?