Steve Bruce under pressure at Blackpool as timeline to save job revealed

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Blackpool manager Steve Bruce has overseen just one win this season and EFL Analysis can exclusively reveal his job could soon hang in the balance.

The Seasiders are one of the sides tipped to be pushing towards the top six in League One this season, with former Premier League boss Bruce at the helm and a whopping 13 new signings arriving at Blackpool this summer.

However, after six games, the club sit third from bottom in the third tier. They do have a game in hand on Port Vale and Peterborough below them, but five losses in all competitions has had fans wondering how the Blackpool board will be feeling about Bruce’s future if this form continues.

The former Aston Villa and Newcastle boss has been in charge since September 2024 and secured a ninth place finish in his first season, nine points off the play-off spots – but our chief football correspondent Graeme Bailey says he will need to turn Blackpool’s form round quickly.

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Bailey says: “Blackpool being one of the promotion favourites there is pressure on Steve Bruce, that has been discussed.

“I do know Evatt would like to get back into work and obviously he’d be a very good fit given his history with Blackpool. I think he would be keen and I could see it. Obviously I still think Steve Bruce will have this weekend [against Northampton Town] to try and put things right. But yeah, he’s under pressure there for sure.”

Former Blackpool player Evatt made 254 appearances for the Lancashire club during his career, and has been linked with being on the Lancashire club’s standby list.

However, The Blackpool Gazette say sources close to them have rubbished those claims as ‘wide of the mark’. It remains to be seen if he would be brought in if Bruce is unable to turn his fortunes at Blackpool around.

How long has Ian Evatt been out of work?

Evatt’s last managerial role was with Blackpool’s League One rivals Bolton Wanderers.

He was at the Greater Manchester outfit for five years after two years at Barrow, winning the Football League Trophy in 2023. He took charge of 261 Trotters games.

After missing out on automatic promotion in the 2023/24 season, he was sacked in January 2025, leaving by mutual consent with Bolton ninth in the league.

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He has worked for a number of clubs since as a loan adviser after developing Liverpool’s Conor Bradley and Manchester City goalkeeper James Trafford at Bolton.