'A season of failure. Sickening result. Boring football' - the blunt Blackpool verdict as Seasiders lose at Reading and miss out on League One play-offs

Blackpool fans on social media have been sharing their verdicts on the Seasiders’ 3-2 defeat at Reading.

Neil Critchley’s side had an outside chance of making the League One play-offs going into their final game of the season at the Royals.

A win would have been good enough to claim a top-six spot – if results elsewhere had gone their way. However, the visitors – who were roared on by 1,752 fans in the away end at the Select Car Leasing Stadium – could not fulfil their end of the bargain as they suffered a 15th league defeat of the season.

That’s left Blackpool sitting eighth in the final League One table. It’s also left the Bloomfield Road faithful contemplating what’s needed to win promotion next season.

Here’s a selection of the views shared on X, formerly Twitter, as fans take stock of this afternoon’s disappointment.

@HereLiesJeff: Lack of ambition, drive and personality away from home. Massively need some proven goalscorers for next season. A fair few need to be shipped out. Problem is, most our best players are loans. Coulson, Dembele, Byers, Rhodes. Rhodes we'll get back but doubt any of the others.

@stgrimmers: Genuine question, why should we renew next season at a likely £350? Boring football, useless manager, and a club that look happy to just be in League 1. During financial hardship for most people, why would people want to see this 'entertainment'?

@Josh_brwd: Everyone will be claiming Critch but the performance from those players needs to taken into account too. Barnsley drew so if we won we'd have been in the playoffs. Need a clear out and some strong signings this summer, some players just aren't good enough.

@IAmChrisBell_: Unpopular opinion right now and I’ll preface this by saying that in hindsight I reckon a different manager would have got us top 6 this season.

@DarrenHumphri12: Ironically as it turned out it was all there for us to go on and win after the early goal and take 6th place. We couldn't take care of our own business despite the early strike. A season of failure. Bluntly.

@MrBoothSci: Embarrassing. Totally embarrassing. Shouldn’t have come down to this game, but had a massive chance despite that. All we had to do was win and we would have made it! Shocking away from home tactics once again. Keeping Critchley shows such a lack of ambition!

@joeyrex: That game sums up our season, poor away form, inconsistent, and poor in-play manager tactics and subs. When you need to win to get play offs you get the job done but we kind of went to pot 2nd half. However I think we’ve finished where we deserve this season. Average season.

@JamesWhitey20: I just don’t even know what to say. How do we go from the last performance, to that? What actually happened at half time? What did Critch say? He mentioned in the interview other results and looking elsewhere, is that what the team talk and the 15 minutes was about? What a joke.

@Joe18105389: I know sometimes his tactics are questionable and we haven’t been good enough at all this season but we need to realise he’s a long term manager and he isn’t going to be sacked anytime soon so we just need to back him and we will get where we want to be

@71Smithy: Not quite good enough this season too many away points dropped. Build in the summer and make a serious assault on promotion.

@Nathaniel_Chas: All you had to do was win, sickening result.

@steveokeeffe62: Not once all season has he taken responsibility for our awful tactics away from home. 12 defeats. 9 without scoring. Easy questions. I wish someone would ask him if he thinks 3-5-2 has been good enough to justify not changing it all season.

@Christianlamb87: I sincerely hope @BlackpoolFC read the comments in this post and do what needs to be done! Critchley isn’t the man to take us forward. Huge rebuild in the summer and he needs to be first out the door.