Just watched latest Switch of Play with Graeme Lee. I must admit that I thought he was the wrong appointment at the time and looking on it didn't fill me with confidence and I was happy when he went. Listening to him explain what went on, I would like to apologise. The poor sod didn't stand a chance and it's clear to see how good a job Challinor did with having to deal with the same numpties. Hope things work out for his family and in his new job at Marske. The sooner the club is sold the better.

Well said. Usual numpties on FB having a pop at him though.

Gunna watch it today.
Got told GL had to work under excruciating greediness when it came to recruitment.
Remember this is the man who created an excellent cup runs moneys for Sing.
Then got shit on big style.

Obviously this thread will continue into varied opinions.
To be Continued ::::::

get what you are saying but would GL have been a born again cloughie under a better regime. doubt it.

Well if it goes tits up under JA then we know why.
Ya know this man has cult status and is a miracle worker. Predicted to turn water into wine.

By YOU

Which sentence ya referring to!
Or all of it

Dunno…just seemed like a larf,

Bored and grounded…blood rain

Wrong thread Snowy ?

Don’t I know I’ll blame the rain

Lee is obviously still getting paid by Pools or has signed a non disclosure, he did make a scathing attack on Lee Rust though. Top and bottom Singh doesn’t know how to run a football club and has been surrounded by people who don’t know either.
Lees down fall was appointing Nelson as his assistant and obviously only winning 1 game from 11 would probably have got most managers the sack.

It's good that Graeme Lee has had a chance to have his say. Judging by the comments on the State Of Play site, fans are trying to give themselves a free pass - the fact is most of us wanted him gone at the time and Raj was only too happy to oblige. 1 win in the last 12 league games will get most mangers the sack, regardless of previous cup heroics.

That said, GL lifted the lid on quite a few things. Didn't know Pools don't have a grass pitch to train on at Aykley Heads - and from the sound of things still don't - or that 3G pitches cause more injuries when the weather warms up and they get sticky than they do in winter.

Lee Rust still at Pools too, and F All use from the sound of things. Nothing about Raj that we don't already know - not an easy man to work for!!

I’ll be blunt, I thought it was a bad appointment from the outset and the end of season run in farce confirmed it for me.

Gramme Lee never stood a chance, askey will go the same way, got to give these managers some sort of fighting chance or we will make the lot of them look terrible.

Most probably
But the pre season optimism on here suggests
Sing n Askey are gunna get us straight back up.

Hope yes.
Reality no
Results buisness

Were we are now patience is required.
No takeover no promotion.

Never stood a chance? If he had kept any sort of form going in the last two months of the season he would have kept his job. Instead, him and Nelse finished their season with P12 W1 D4 L7.

Not saying for a minute he'd still be here now if he'd done better then but at least the Hartley horror show would never have happened.

Unlike you, I haven't got a crystal ball to see John Askey's future but I doubt very much he'll force Raj to sack him with a crap run of results like that.

It doesn’t suggest it to me, in fact while some people are optimistic I can’t recall anyone saying we’re getting promoted.
People are wary of that sort of thing.
What’s wrong with optimism by the way

Optimism is natural this time of year.
22 sets of fans will be disappointed come May.

Askey is no mug, if he thought he was in an impossible position I think he'd have told Raj to stick his job, didn't he walk away from York on a point of principle?

The difference is Askey is in a much stronger position, given what he achieved with none of his own players with only a dozen games left.

Yes we ultimately fell through the trapdoor however it was only by 1 game. Hindsight is a great thing but drawing the Crawley home game, not losing at Stevenage- when that shithouse hid in the net and Sylla deciding to down tools are the 3 things that cost us in my opinion.

From what Lee said in the interview when he was sacked, Raj was worried about a fan backlash.
He certainly got that after the Crawley home game- and promptly put the club up for sale.

Which is why I believe Askey has got a good hand-
Firstly, we saw how he almost kept us up with other people's players
Secondly, he has experience of success in and around this level
Thirdly, he,s no mug, comes across as a man of integrity, with the backing of the fans

So he would have to have an absolute shocker for the majority of the fanbase to turn on him and be justifiably sacked. Otherwise Raj would literally be run out of town.

I'm not on social media personally, so I don't get to read some of the bile that is spewed on the Facebook page against his ownership. Overall I think Raj has got off quite lightly given what happened.

Being exiled I obviously don't get to as many games as I'd like or once did. Please correct me if I'm wrong older members - but I don't think Raj has had anywhere near the levels of abuse that Garry Gibson got back in the early 90's!

Remember being tucked under a Bedsheet away at Huddersfield's Leeds Road ground on an Open terrace that boar the slogan -

'Gibson Out! Busby Out! Tits Out!'

Think it might have been Mr Ripper's handiwork

We drew 1-1 with the other Little Colin West grabbing an equaliser - think we were relegated from the third tier that season, losing 1-8 to Plymouth at home last match of the season.

Double post- sorry chaps!

Pre Gibson. owners could more or less go unscathed by results as we were more concerned with the club just staying afloat and the odd fan rebellion by half a dozen chanting outside post match was soon moved on by plod..and the letters of criticism in an indifferent Football Mail (2 a week) could hardly be described as ‘media outrage’. As fans you were swept along by the riptide of events and tried to understand the politics…..
Social media revolutionised fan participation, suddenly everyone had an opinion and could give it to the world, but still remains a minor fraction of the actual support…we’re operating in a Football Mail with a 24/7 letters page but we just don’t have to buy a stamp and post it.

think optimism is due to finishing the season better under JA than we started it. sdded to the fact of him being a proper manager with experiance at the level we are at. no rookie learning there trade or a one past their sell back date who didn,t hang around long. apart from challinor over the last 10 years there have been people managing the club who should never have got through the doors. being ex players without experiance only keep fans happy till the first few defeats happen and their credit in the bank quickly goes.

I always felt getting an ex player back, was to distract from Challinor riding into the sunset
It might have been better to avoid the cosmetic distraction and put a shift in to get a competent manager.
Lee was a panic appointment.

Didn't Raj actually admit to Lee's appointment being a bit of a panic measure? Followed by a colossal mistake in appointing Hartley who he'd never heard of, then another in appointing the lunatic Curle. Not sure how involved Raj is in the managerial appointments or if he leaves it others, either way we have to hope that he's struck lucky this time around and that JA is not a false Messiah.

I believe Lee was naive, he must have known how Pools was being run etc, He has plenty of friends, contacts in the area not only at Pools but Darlington who knew how Raj worked. He stated that he had players lined up but so do all managers but they don’t always come off and most he mentioned were ex Boro and the one he did bring in didn’t exactly shine.
Sorry Graham you made a mistake giving up a nice ‘cushy’ number at the Boro looking after top young players with little pressure.

most likely raj employs them on the advice of others. if thats the case i,d love to know who his advisors are.

That would be nice to know, we could then find out who recommended Wee Jock McFloppy.

Fully agree - interesting to hear his insights into short 2021-2022 pre-season, no grass training pitch, player fatigue & patched up injuries, no early player contract negotiations, recruitment process. Little wonder that the results took a dive after losing on penalties to Rotherham.

And he still has a love for the club

Until the sale goes through, Raj needs directors/advisers who have some kind of clue & can add real value, rather than the Bavingtons, Hobins & Rusts he has had in charge

deep down we all have a love for the club but over the years our love has been tested more than at most clubs having to survive mistakes on mistakes that many of us said we told you so at the outset. those running clubs, managers and many players think we are a thick set of sods who know nothing about the game because we never played it at the top level. we all have eyes and some sort of brain and know a lot that has happened at the club have been gambles but bluffing on a bad hand.

No grass training pitch. Have we not been using the training facilities at Durham for a number of years now and I never heard previous managers complain. Maybe Lee has had it nice and comfortable at the Boro with top class facilities at hand.

We have been using those facilities yes. And the majority of those facilities ain’t grass.

So Sweeney (who has Raj's ear and is well thought 9f at the club) decides to tell a new manager that we haven't got a grass pitch to train on! Why the f**k hadn't he raised it as a significant issue over the last umpteen years he's been on the staff?

I would have thought that a new manager would have knowledge of the facilities he was going to be working with before he signed on the dotted line. Surely training facilities, or the lack of them, are a daily and most important factor of any manager's life. These sort of revelations tell me more about Lee's attitude and attention to detail (or lack of it) than anything else.

I can't be arsed to find the post but I remember saying something along the lines of Lee and Nelson should have a review of their ability and have the guts to go to Raj and tell him they were out of their depth or words to that effect. I was surprised at the appointment of two rookies to be honest. I thought a promising young manager under the guidance of an old head would have been the better move. The fact that their record finally did for them is enough for me. I was not surprised. I was disappointed it didn't work better for Lee but not Nelson but if Lee was solely responsible for Nelson's appointment, that is another nail in his managerial coffin. Out of his depth I'm afraid. An old head could have changed all that. Hindsight yes but there it is. Raking it all up won't achieve anything.

None of this is relevant to how well Lee has been able to describe the absolute chaos behind the scenes at HUFC during his time at the club.

This.
I had to laugh when he said that.
He should be in Halifax's shoes,they train at some comprehensive school pitch.

So now we are happy to have better training facilities than Halifax and a better chairman than Southend. These are some aspirations.

There must be a club whose pies are worse than ours too.

Just a shame we are losing our media man who is better than the media man of Rovers Quoit Club FC.

Did you not notice we lost our media manager 2yrs ago. Since then he’s been to Barrow and last I heard was at Spennymoor. Whilst I acknowledge he was good at his job and he kept us informed of what was happening he had no input to the playing side or the running of the club to my knowledge.

I agree with you Norton. I thought Lee was very honest in his analysis of his term at Pools and confirmed my fears that Singh is a tight wad. At the time I thought Lees dismissal was harsh especially after the cup runs and safety in the league. Where did the money go?

Disagree, Lee said he had applied for managerial positions over the years but with no success. He didn’t apply for job at Pools and when he was offered it jumped in with both feet, the first thing he should have done before accepting it was speak with Sweeney and find out what the score was including what sort of training facilities there were only to find out they were on an artificial surface after accepting job.

even if it is a school pitch instead of being at leeds university that i thoughtit will be better than at one time where they trained in a public park. anyway its funny we managed to get promotion with poor training facilities. are they only poor if the team struggles.

You’ve applied the handbrake too early there, you conveniently forget the total collapse in form after the Cup run which would have got most managers sacked.
Far from keeping us in the League he nearly dropped us out.

A 6 weeks gap between DC n GL suggests there was no panic involved.
Just the usual cheap option and very poor Football Knowledge.
Always gunna be a range of views on this thread Snowy given we back in division 5.

Kev, there’d be differing views whatever league we were in and long may it continue.
Imagine if we all agreed .
.”After you Mr Kevin,
….no Mr Snowy, after you…
….so we are agreed that we agree then Mr Kevin…..
…..yes I agree wholeheartedly Mr Snowy with the agreement.
……Good.

I agree
As long as we dont stoop to the Poolie Brothers level then we all get on as the Bunker Family should.

UTP.

And you of course believe every word he says, He was given a chance by the club, just like Challinor was but he bollocksed it up, starting with the appointment of his assistant. Anything that suits your purpose of bashing the club you cling on to like the last lifebelt on the Titanic.
I wish him well at Marske. Has he made Nelson his assistant there???
The club has appointed a new manager, why not get behind him. oh maybe you can't bear the fact that Raj appears to be getting behind him, so you cling to Lee's muck raking.
It really is pathetic Mr Imp.
Are you really a Poolie??