In many ways, 2010 has been the year of Ian Holloway. The man, the mystery, the manager. After securing an impressive win against Cardiff City in the Championship Play-Off Final to earn promotion to the Premier League, Ian Holloway’s Blackpool side has been a revelation to watch this season, opening up teams and playing beautiful attractive football, the way it was meant to be played.

While Blackpool has been entertaining us on the pitch, manager Ian Holloway has been sincere and irreverent off it as witnessed by this memorable quotes of his in 2010:

“Why haven’t they got cameras? The officials can speak to each other easily enough now. Why aren’t we using laptops that are linked up and can give a decision in five seconds? A chimpanzee could do it – with not much training. We might as well go back to being cavemen, grab our girl by the hair, drag her into the cave whether she wants to come in or not because we may as well live in that age. We’ve come forward, haven’t we?”

Reporter: “Ian, have you got any injury worries?” Holloway: “No, I’m fully fit, thank you.”

“In football you need to have everything in your cake mix to make the cake taste right. One little bit of ingredient that Tony [Pulis] uses in his cake gets talked about all the time is Rory [Delap]’s throw. Call that cinnamon and he’s got a cinnamon flavoured cake. It’s not fair and it’s not right and it’s only a small part of what he does.”

“You are talking out of your hat. I would like to say out of your ass, but that’s a donkey and I don’t like having a go at donkeys. If some bright spark from the Premier League, or Barclays Premier League as we’re supposed to call it, wants to come down and have a chat and a cup of coffee…you’ll probably get it chucked in your lap.”

“I am more than happy [at Blackpool] and I am afraid the chairman will need a hell of a tub of cream to get rid of me – I’m like a bad rash and not easily curable.”

“I remember my dad telling me a joke where a boxer sits on his stool between rounds and his trainer says: ‘Come on, he isn’t laying a glove on you’. The boxer replies: ‘You better watch the referee then, because somebody is hitting me.'”

“We got it mixed up. I wanted to take Varney off and put Carney on but we ended up taking off Crainey. It all got confused. Varney, Carney, Crainey is a tongue-twister. We made a mistake but I’ll let my staff off as they’re great.”

“Roy [Hodgson] is a fantastic manager … The club has to sort itself out above him to give him any sort of chance. You have to direct the club together and until that takes place it will really tough for any manager. Jose Mourinho would not take the job because he would understand the state of things.”

“‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is one of my dad’s favourite songs; he’s no longer with us and I was singing it with them [in Blackpool’s game against Liverpool at Anfield, earlier this season].”