Ian Holloway's patter did not falter as he insisted it is far better that Blackpool must now beat Manchester United to survive rather than face a weaker team on Sunday.

This breathless win over a disappointing Bolton Wanderers side on an afternoon that offered top‑dollar value leaves the Seasiders knowing victory at the champions on the final day may extend their big Premier League adventure into a second term.

Holloway said of this eventuality: "It just sums it up for us, we've got to win at Man U and it's better than having to win at Wigan. I'd rather have this scenario no matter how good they are. I want my lads to savour it. It's the ultimate. I find myself in those sorts of scenarios and it's wonderful, absolutely wonderful, because we've earned the right to do that. It's fitting for our overall story to go there and get something that will keep us up."

With Wolves and Blackburn on 40 points and these clubs facing each other on Sunday, Blackpool, who are a further point back, know that victory over United would probably allow them to escape the drop.

When Holloway comes to deliver his final exhortations to his troops at Old Trafford he can point to previous experience. On New Year's Day 1992 he was a member of the Queens Park Rangers side that handed that season's Sir Alex Ferguson vintage a hiding.

"The shock was that he left out a couple of players who were really important and on fire, the two wide players [Andrei] Kanchelskis and [Ryan] Giggs," Holloway recalled. "We scored with probably the first two touches of the ball, I hadn't even had a touch myself [and] that was the first time I'd played there.

"To win 4-1 [was amazing] – and Dennis Bailey was on fire [scoring a hat‑trick], everything he hit went in that day. We're probably going to need one of those. We could still do the unthinkable."

According to Holloway his has been a Krypton Factor challenge this season. "I don't care what anyone else thinks, its been very difficult for all of us – there are three people at the top of the club who day in and day out try and plan. It was just the most difficult puzzle we'd ever had. That's the chairman, Karl [Oyston], Matt Williams [secretary] and myself. It was so against us from the very off you would not believe it. I cannot tell you how bad the summer was – we grabbed a few [players], last minute, then come January we had to grab a few more."

The seven-goal sequence of this helter-skelter match began: Kevin Davies for Bolton, DJ Campbell for Blackpool, Jason Puncheon (Blackpool) and Matthew Taylor (Bolton), who all netted inside 24 minutes to leave the scores level. Then, Campbell's second strike, from a superb Charlie Adam ball, gave Blackpool a 3-2 half-time lead.

But not for long. Daniel Sturridge's 53rd‑minute goal silenced the home support before Adam's clinical finish sent them home ecstatic: the result was an exact replica of the famous 1953 Matthews final.

Now, if Blackpool can engineer victory against a United team that will be "weaker" due to the Champions League final against Barcelona the following Saturday, then Holloway's colourful assertions will also have secured a top-flight audience again.

On Alan Shearer's recent assertion that Adam might have missed his chance to grace a grander stage by remaining beside the seaside in January, Holloway said: "I've actually taken a lot of stick over that. 'I hope that young lad's chance hasn't passed him by.' Get stuffed, what are you on about?

"The kid's fantastic, one of the best seven players in this division, are you telling me they're not going to snap him up? He falls in the river like a sardine and they'll gobble him up – if that's what Mr Cantona meant all those years ago? It was worse than Shakespeare. I watched Hamlet the other night and what a shame they nearly all died in the end. I've never heard so many words make so little sense yet it was brilliant – a bit like my interviews."

And, occasionally, like his team.