I was frustrated enough that Pools didn’t turn up for the Crawley game, but now realise that a draw would have been enough!

We have finished -3 goal difference behind them but a 0-0, 1-1 or 2-2 would have saved us by 1 goal.

Anyway over the course of a season you finish where you deserve, so let’s “look forward” to the National League and hope we are competitive.

Yes looking forward to St Albans if they get through.
Its the place where hot cross buns were invented.

Or the non penalty at Tranmere or the cheating kunt at Stevenage.
Could go on and on.

Struggling to remember any really soft penalties awarded to Pools. Plenty of good shouts turned down though. What's the saying? You make you're own luck? Sometimes refs make it for you.

Although you can be sure that if Crawley needed a point at Swindon today, they would have got one.

The article from Loughlin does a good job of summarising the past 12 months. My end of season thoughts pretty similar.

The club had an opportunity to harness the good feeling of the promotion season - sat in play off contention in first few months of League 2 - by pushing the boat out to ensure we retained DC until the end of the season. If not possible, then the debacle of the two managerial appointments after him left so much to be desired.

The contract negotiations in the off season also nearly put paid to the good momentum before DC left. Players such as Johnson, Cass, Oates and Armstrong all chose other options than Pools.

The rest is history and from the moment we lost Dave Challinor we have returned to a losing culture of epic proportion. We concede far too many and score too little across every manager since DC. The players and managers have not been good enough. We have retained the same 5-3-2 as DC, but fallen well short. At least under Askey now we are seeing progression in our performances, we look a lot more organised and harder to beat. Still need a lot more pace, power and end product for next year.

The potential for the Americans to take over would have transformed us immediately into a top League 2 / potential League 1 prospect. . Was that ‘our moment’?

We are now returning to the level we should be operating in based on the past 12-16 months. We’ve underestimated the step up, made a complete mess of it and on balance - royally deserve relegation.

What next? In Askey we have a manager who could help us compete next year, his PPG and performance levels from an average squad is commendable. Recruitment has been rank bad , let’s hope his is better (budget permitted) - We’re yet to see a good transfer window in the past couple seasons. The club remains a third, fourth or last option and a reputation as an ‘avoid at all costs’ - even when the money we put on offer is good to better than offered elsewhere. We always miss out on our top targets and lose our best players for free.

Managers, players, backroom staff, they all come & go, but losing them quite as emphatically as we have done says more about our infrastructure & future potential. A sorry season (and a half!) & overall uncertain state of affairs at Pools. The elusive new ownership is the big sticking point, especially as we desperately need a group who can take us much further. But there’s certainly room for some hope with John Askey at the helm at least.

Think there's plenty of room for optimism as long as JA is here, he's done well before with very small budgets.
Major stumbling block might be getting shot of the dross on long contracts to free up wages.

There's always a way round that. Knowing Singh, it's probably in the contract of, you take a 30/40% cut in salary if relegated or you have to sign a new National League T&C or you can walk

We shouldn’t have been in that position against Crawley in the first place.

Playing devils advocate re players let go. Johnson had already been tapped up by Port Vale and I understand didn’t even negotiate a new contract, Cass was on loan from Newcastle who decided he went to Port Vale, Oats and Armstrong both just wanted more money than we could afford.I think everybody knew Harrogate had Armstrong lined up. As for reduction in wages if relegated I believe this is a common practice with many clubs.

Armstrong was Salford’s player to sell.

We could and should have had a lot of these players spoken to much earlier about contracts. We don't do this because Raj penny pinches over it and our best players end up leaving for nowt.

It wasn't so straightforward after the promotion, with not knowing which league we'd be in Oates and Armstrong had agreements with league clubs before the playoff final.
Our downfall has been the fact that we didn't build on what we had and did last season, not losing the likes of Oates, Armstrong, etc when we did.
At least as things stand we're going into the break with a manager in place rather than spending the summer looking for one then panic signing 4th rate players.

Oates hadn’t pre-signed - he just turned us down.

Not disagreeing Mr Bigdog, but some people believe he was actually our player at the time, although it was never established when Harrogate made the initial approach.

Of course we should of look luke if we get promoted we can give you this if we stay in national league we can give you that . We had no intention of trying to sign these lads or keep these players, we wanted everything on the cheap. Every January now we hear about these superstar league 2 players we are after, yet not only do they not come we don't get a replacement anywhere near the standards.

Fans are seeing through this now. I just hope he allows askey the chance to get his players in early, not getting 2 players to appease fans then waiting till 2 weeks before the season to bring the rest in.

its all just common sense and nothing new in football regarding players. its so simple really that teams who improve bring in players who are better than those who leave and the strugglers do the opposite. clubs go on about improvements in the side by signing x,y or z. really this rarely happens even at the top as really its more about keeping the status quo up there. if there was mprovement it certainly doesn,t show in the entertainment at every level.