IAN HOLLOWAY

"You saw us play. It meant I had to bring in three people who aren't quite as well rehearsed as those three and we didn't look cohesive.

"We've also had our player of the season (Charlie Adam) suspended. Charlie's a big player for us and we missed him tonight. We missed his energy, his belief and his ability.

"Do I have any regrets? I regret they went out at the wrong time.

"Two of them were injured anyway, so they wouldn't have been playing. What do I regret? Leaving one of them off the trip while two of them were injured?

"No I don't, that's discipline. I did exactly the right thing. My job is to teach them how to be proper young human beings and respect their job and respect what other people think about their job and how much they pay to watch them.

"They should respect that by not going out drinking and dancing until that time in the morning when they're working the following day."

ALAN IRVINE

"Blackpool are a good team. Ian's obviously missing a few key players at the moment, but I like the way he's got them playing.

"We've had a couple of great results against them and that's terrific from our point of view.

"But I still think Blackpool will win an awful lot of games between now and the end of the season and they will be genuine contenders for the play-offs.

Five wins out of seven is magnificent in any division, the lads deserve enormous credit for what they've done and a clean sheet was nice.

"But we're still very much in it. A couple of bad results and people are catching up on you. Reading look like they won their game.

"I think this is going to go a long, long way. We still need six wins I believe, but it sounds an awful lot better, six out of 16 than 11 out of 23."