Scots illuminate Blackpool: Life's a beach for Stephen Crainey and his compatriots

Andrew Smith finds life's a beach for Stephen Crainey and his compatriots, who are a game away from promotion

• Tower of strength: Stephen Crainey, a consistent performer in Blackpool's defence this season, is chasing promotion and a recall into Craig Levein's Scotland squad. Photograph: Getty Images

EVERYONE AT Blackpool has heard it said countless times. Ian Holloway's men have no earthly right to be in the Championship play-off final; no business being one game away from the Premier League. In the sixth-richest league on the planet, a 3.5million wage bill and average crowds of 9,000 puts you at the bottom end. Better off only than Scunthorpe.

Blackpool full-back Stephen Crainey has a theory about why his team are currently preparing for next Saturday's "90m game" against Cardiff City at Wembley and not licking their wounds after a relegation scrap in England's second tier, though. "We don't see ourselves as a small club; on the football side we don't think or act like that," says the Scottish internationalist. He is one of a five-strong tartan troupe at Bloomfield Road headed up by talismanic Charlie Adam and comprising of Stephen Dobbie, Steven Husband and on-loan Aston Villa midfielder Barry Bannan. Crainey, Adams and Dobbie, as a transforming substitute, were this week to the fore in the second leg 4-3 semi-final play-off win away to fancied Nottingham Forest – a victory that has opened up a new front in the appreciation of Blackpool.

Behind the scenes, the Lancashire club are said to be one of those quaint throwbacks. An endearing – new stand awaiting – mix-and-match stadium that can house 12,000 is matched by make-and-do behind-the-scenes organisation wherein a tiny number of office staff pitch in with whatever jobs are required. Crainey laughs at that sketching of his employers. Yet, having played at two of Britain's biggest clubs in Celtic and Leeds United, as well as in the Premier League with Southampton, the full-back insists he never felt he was taken a sizeable step down when he arrived as a free agent in July 2007.

"Blackpool had just beaten Yeovil in a League One play-off to get in to the Championship (ending 29 years outside of even the second tier] but my first thought was that there was something special about the club, about the team spirit," he says. "Since then, we've just kept adding quality and advancing on the field."

Still, what they have achieved this season is beyond comprehension. The Blackpool Gazette ran a feature the other day showing how last summer, every pundit predicted the club would return to the English third tier.

The fact they are slight favourites to go up is in itself an expression of football's unpredictability. Observers pinpoint a few elements in Blackpool's illuminating rise across recent years. One is the investment by Valeri Belokon. The Latvian businessman and club chairman has injected 1.5m into the football budget across each of the past three years. The money was first used wisely by manager Simon Grayson and, since May 2009, has been made to work wonders by his successor Ian Holloway, a maverick manager who Blackpool took a chance on when no-one would following a disastrous spell at Leicester that left the laugh-a-minute conversationalist in danger of becoming a laughing stock.

Never did Belokon's backing and Holloway's footballing nous come together in so pivotal a fashion as when the club parted with a record 500,000 transfer fee to sign Adam last summer, following his successful six-month loan spell in the seaside town. Holloway cites the 18-goal contribution of the sweet-striking, sleek-passing, slow-moving old-fashioned-physiqued midfield schemer as underpinning his club's preposterous Premier League pursuit.

"It was good that the president stumped up for Charlie," Crainey says. "He has a great left foot and is crucial to the way we play. We attack whatever the circumstances, and with the three in the middle Charlie is able to do that."

Holloway has built his team around Adam, whose stamina levels wouldn't allow for getting the best out of him in a central two. The fact the Blackpool manager has made the switch from 4-4-2 to improve results is, Crainey maintains, testament to his capabilities as a coach – attributes that his stand-up comedian persona can sometimes cause to be overlooked.

The common belief is that, wounded by that stint at Leicester that prompted him to take time out from the game, the Bristolian took over at Bloomfield Road as a man on a mission. "I never saw a man with a point to prove from the early days of pre-season; I saw a manager who knew his stuff," Crainey says. "Certainly, he can have fun and joke around, but he knows when it's right to do that and when you have to get serious. We put our work in on the training pitch and that is why we were able to make 4-3-3 work. We struggled with it in pre-season and early on, but kept at it, and we have been able to come strong in the later stages of the Championship. After our first good run of about ten games, people said the bubble would burst. Then they said that after 20. Then 30. You can't keep it going after 46 games unless you are a good side."

Crainey says he likes being around players with familiar accents and believes that even Husband and Bannan, in their limited outings, have made a contribution. "We have a tight-knit group where everyone is really down to earth and that comes through in the way we play."

The 29-year-old won't lack for familiar faces in his opponents next weekend. He played at Celtic alongside Cardiff goalkeeper David Marshall, and was in Glasgow at the same time as Chris Burke and Ross McCormack were team-mates of Adam at Ibrox. Gavin Rae was there too, but won't feature for the Welsh side because of a tendon injury. However, with Kevin McNaughton a regular in a Cardiff defence for which former Motherwell captain Paul Quinn provides back-up, in all there could be ten Scots in action at Wembley on Saturday. The national manager Craig Levein would seem then to be a certain attendee. Crainey will hope so. He is looking to produce a performance, and help his team achieve an outcome, that could improve his prospects of adding to the six caps he has.

"I haven't given up hope of playing for my country again," says Crainey. As any Blackpool followers will tell you, stranger things have happened.