Took the hit in fairness to him, especially on the first half

His analysis of the 2nd half seemed bizarre to say the least--thought Sloggett was our most effective 'no 10' apparently for his ability to better get hold of the 2nd balls if I understood him correctly---if that is the 'creativity' he is looking for then it could be a long season.

Still at least he didn't try and sugar coat it--onwards to Woking--which as he recognized is a BIG match

I was writing my post obviously same time as you Loyal. You posted just before so apologies for starting another thread.
I thought he explained the second half did improve a little. Then praised the subs who helped by retaining and winning the ball. The comment on Slogget I took as a dig at the players who went off Campbell and Mancini basically saying Slogget did a better job.

I agree that sloggett likely does a better job at fighting for 50/50s than Mancini and Campbell…but if that’s what he wants out of a number 10 Christ helps us

Go listen to the interview again Loyal he said Slogget played a lovely ball from the 10 position through to Sheron that makes him wonder if that could be his role moving forward. He also said when a team plays that bad and nicks a draw in those type of games they add up and can make a difference at the end of the season. Probably the most honest manager we have ever had and remember it's still working progress and very early days and we still 6th. UTP

I thought I'd have a listen to the manager too before posting.

Sarll keeps saying "it's all on me" but does he really mean it? In the interview with Radio Tees he blames himself for picking so many "creative, constructive players" in midfield (he means Campbell and Mancini) and it not working out. Nothing about creative midfielders not having a right lot to do when Dixon is under orders to boot the ball in the general direction of Mani D at every opportunity! Only one team tried to play football in the first half and that was Wealdstone, who passed Pools to death at times.

Sloggett replaced Hunter, who was having an off day, and brought the "dynamism and aggression" that Sarll wanted. It was noticeable that Dixon's orders changed at half time and he was allowed to roll it out to players once in a while rather than hoofing it. Featherstone got on the ball and brought some control to Pools play. But the equalizer, when it finally came, was another boot upfield from Dixon that landed perfectly for Mani. 1 in a 100 ain't bad. Or is that 200, counting the away games?

I'll take salvaging a point at the death. We wore Wealdstone down. Probably they aren't the worst team in the division. Pools are 4 games unbeaten.

What team will Sarll put out at Wolking on Monday? 11 willing runners and hope to get a result based on sheer athleticism or maybe another lucky punt from the keeper? That might actually do as plan A away from home.

But it definitely won't pass muster in home games. The fans have already started voting with their feet. It's torture to watch. I thought the first half against Southend when we were still 11 against 11 was bad, but for 75 minutes today was worse. Big talk about 'it's the result that counts' doesn't cut it when the results are a 0-0 and a 1-1.

Speaking a lot of sense there Hogans.

I was surprised at the quality of Wealdstones passing ability and Pools were lucky to be still in it at half time, If they just play up and under game I can not see Mani D scoring any where near 25 goals this season. They need a speedy winger who can go past his man and put the crosses in for Mani D and Madine to get on the end of,

Everyone more or less saying the same thing and glad it just wasn’t me sticking the boot in. Sorry about the pun. The main difficulty with the high press is getting some composure and not rushing the passing when we win the ball high up. The system does not suit a lot of players . Sarll needs to get a grip asap. Ferguson not getting up field enough and teams just put 2 or 3 on mani and stop Grey from playing . Mancinis passing like most of the team is woeful. Whether the manager can make this system work I don’t know. It’s not pleasing on the eye to watch

Well said hogan the worrying thing about swell
Interview is he seemed to think the solution is not to vary the tactics but double down on the athleticism, hopefully not what he meant but if he’s blaming Mancini and Campbell for not thriving on up and understand we have more than a shite performance against wealdstone to worry about

https://youtu.be/loTTW9ak3H4?si=MCgywr9_C9GR5pQF
At least he was honest. Blamed himself and took responsibility. Hats off to that.

I can smell something.

Being the ever pessimist, it’s early on in the season and he had no real money to spend, looking at his CV what attracted Pools to appoint him as the manager ?

Coffee or shit

Maybe the budget. I said maybe
KPs assessment of the players needed to get promotion this season probably cost him his job.
He got some shit on here but had the team creating plenty of scoring opportunities.
Even though the defence was terrible.

3 ways to look at our start which is pyd 4 pts 8 in a play off spot.

1. We could of played outstanding excellent all round football and been very unlucky to drop 4 pts.

2. We could of played boring shit football n been extremely lucky to get 8 pts.

3.We could have a mixture in between.

Will leave opinions 4,5,6 etc to the rest of the Bunker team.

Lets debate civilised.

UTP.

the positive was him coming out and putting up his hands about the first half display. the negative is the possible over reaction by him to the soft pretty pools we have seen for a couple of seasons by completely changing the style of play and outlook of the side. its not pleasing on the eye so far this season in the same way it wasn,t the last couple unless we won. a style somewhere in between both is what i,d like to see and not games fought out by willing fit runners to just about get us over the line. it aint going to swell the gates as many want some entertainment as well as points on the board.

This team has been together for a matter of weeks and are still trying to gel.
Four games unbeaten.
We will have bad games, in this one we salvaged a point.
If these players were great all the time they wouldn’t be in the National League.
The team battled for a draw despite playing poorly.
It’s very early days, give it a bit of time before turning all suicidal Syd.

you could say the exact thing about every team in the league as they,ll all will have a different squad of players than they had last season. thats papering over some of the cracks in the squad like scoring and getting points when the team is playing badly is. o for a sunday morning i can come on here saying how unlucky we have been by battering someone for 90 minutes but lost to there only shot of the game.

Although I always try to be positive, yesterday was very poor. Saying that, I think there's a reality v expectations thing that comes into play... Most people, myself included, expected wealdstone to be a poor team, and they absolutely weren't. I was reading a few articles about them yesterday and they're maybe not as shit as all that, even Sarll gave them credit the day before in an interview.
Four games in unbeaten, one goal conceded, , I'm prepared to cut them a bit of slack. If we can go to Woking and get a win, puts a different outlook on things
No getting away from how shite yesterday was though, a fit charman would change things, were crying out for wingers.

exactly so why bring in a full back and a central midfielder when its so obvious lack of wingers is not helping our attacks. this is one area we have actually gone back on and not forward.

didn,t see much high press myself, thus allowing wfc to plat their game.

No real Money!

Cambell on nowt
Madine """""
Sheron """""
Hunter """""

No debate there Kevin, Youve made ya mind up.

The voice of reason, Which i subscribe to, Some others may not.

Apart from one spell their wasnt we allowed wealdstone to pasd the ball at will any team looks decent if you just give them the ball. Southend looked half decent too with the ball.

I tried to point out in other posts about WFC, Did people listen Nah
Pretty good squad, They will not struggle., Still finding their feet like us.

We will not win tommorow playing like we have been. Simple as that. We are creating absoloutely nowt in games, results are papering over huge cracks here. But credit where credit is due he has tightened the defence up big time. The midfield all looks very samey and after watching 4 games now i believe featherstone is our best option there. Featherstone i cant believe im saying it. But we look way better with him.

Featherstone has always been able to put his foot on the ball and dictate things, Now it really stands out in this squad,

All comes down to playing players is their best positions really. I think Hunter is a defensive, ball winning player(?) When Featherstone came on and Hunter was pushed further up he was pretty clueless. That doesn’t necessarily make him a bad player but he struggled.
We’ve got to commit to a style of play but execute it properly. If we’re going long and picking up second balls, then we’ve got to be precise with it in the final third. Too often yesterday it was just hitting it into an area, which was too easy for Wealdstone.
If Featherstone plays then he needs the right players around him.
Or something like that!

to sum up hunter as a player you need to look back to the southend game when he went back to help the defence to see out the game for a point. we cannot expect him to be good at everything where his defensive capabilities is something we have needed for years. you do not buy a terrier to do the rescue work a newfoundland does in the sea.

Exactly.

Voice of reason

And guess what 90% on here wanted shot of him.

Every other club in the country can say the same thing. How come its us that still needs to gel? Isnt pre season about gelling getting things sorted. Are we sure its gelling or the tactics are pretty useless for the team we have? We have two of the best players in the league and a lad that got promoted to league 1 so far apart from the last minute yday we have made them look like pretty dire footballers.

Absolutely the tactics are wrong, Parkes, Fergy, Fev, Mancini, Grey, Mani D are decent footballers yet we're asking them to forget about passing and movement completely in favour of hoofball.
Not saying we should go back to tippy tappy non productive stuff of previous seasons but mix it up and let them express themselves a bit especially in the opponents half.

Nah, Rather have the points.

I am with you 100% Gray

The points will die off. You wont continually get points without creating. Wait till we play the barnets and Gatesheads when we will need to probobly score more than 1 goal.

I want points and a bit of football, we've got the players to do it, a bit of composure and a bit more talking to each other to tell them when they've got time would be a start.
I'd take the points and dire football if it guarantees promotion, but I'll probably swerve games when the weather is bad something I've never done before.

Most Deffo.
You don't get a Full season of luck.
Big test of both manager and players is how we react to a defeat.
Good forbid we take less than 3 pts v tinpot Braintree.

If Askey had been given waterfall and Parkes last year then a chance to have a crack at it this year with dodds and Mancini back while dead wood off the payroll I would fancy him to make a better fist of it than this guy…

Askey was unlucky losing Dodds and Mancini, we were near the top of the league top at one time until the 2 of them got injured.

All previous managers have had to deal with injuries n suspensions.
It's part of the game and becoming a stupid alibi/excuse for failurism.
Manage the team in a way to avoid that scenario.
Shudda
Wudda
Cudda counts for jackshit.
Remember it's non league football and 90% of the players are non league for the reason of not being very good.
This is a no excuse season.
IMO we need 2 to 3 quality loanies to maintain a promotion drive.
Hopefully the drop off crowds don't quosh the objective of promotion because most teams this season are in the same boat.

The 10 to 12 games into the season will/should give us a better indication to which direction Pools are going in.

We have a quality forward line for this league, possibly the best in mani d, potentially the best to come in madine, backed up by joel grey and possibly the best player in the league mancini, why are we playing these tactics? Its godamn awful and he has got away with it with a couple of flukey results. We should kill teams with a bit of footy.

My mantra exactly…I stand by it..

Askey……
What colours the sky in your world…Askey lost all interest after the win at Grimsby when some individuals appeared to have a tantrum and looked to have disincentivised him.
He’d left the club in his mind long before he actually left in my ever so humble opinion.

Including myself and probably a large % of the fans n club thought after that Grimsby result we had retained our EFL status.
After that I fully put Relegation onto Askey.

If DS can't get the best out of that forward line by October then the question will be asked.
What the hell is going on when KP had us scoring for fun.
For me September a massive pivitol point of our season.
I'm not one these fantasists who says if we struggling by October that you don't look at the league table till after xmas

I think Featherstone will start Billingham. Would not be surprised if we start of with the same side which finished the last match. There is no reason why this system won’t work in the future and it’s a work in progress. Lots of teams play using the high press . Of course the higher teams have better players. Our football is pretty unpleasing on the eye. sarll still needs at least 10/12 games to try and bed this system in. Just hoping we see some flashes this afternoon and get a win. I want to see numbers in their box too.

10 games in …but…if it’s the same football and we’re in the top five, we have a dilemma.

I think he has got to start him, im not seeing the fuss aboit the midfielders we signed yet, all very safe not doing too much, havent really strung 3 passes together yet. So if thats whats happening get the midfielder in that can actually pass to a blue and white shirt in fev, lets see mancini flourish, campbell given a bloody chance and lets have a go at woking because all i see from the first 4 games is that eventually, we are going to quite tamely lose a game, it should of been saturday, it probobly will be today if we persist in the same thing.