Blackpool have just FOUR substitutes for Championship season opener

August 10, 2014 • • min read

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After struggling to assemble a squad all summer, troubled Championship side Blackpool named only four substitutes for their season opener at Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

Blackpool's recruitment problems in pre-season have been well-documented as they lost 27 players in the summer and had just eight professionals under contract two weeks ago.

Manager José Riga tried his best to scramble to actually field a team for the league opener and managed to sign 12 players in 12 days.

Despite securing a handful of new signings, Blackpool failed to register them before the Football League's deadline.

As a result, Riga was forced to include two youth team players on his bench to take the tally to four - three short of the available seven.

Blackpool start with just four players on the bench against Nottingham Forest http://t.co/GwjzfbRdrc #bbcfootball pic.twitter.com/EjJGuFAffs
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 9, 2014

"In the morning it was even worse, we only had nine players qualified," Riga said afterwards.

"During the day we managed to get more. There were two 17-year-olds on the bench who were scholars."

Unfortunately for the Tangerines, their patched-together team wasn't enough to get a result against Forest as they fell 2-0 to the hosts.

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