Don’t compare a mere football match with Remembrance Sunday.


‘Silly fishing’, you mean discussing uncomfortable facts, no.
What’s the point of celebrating a win when you said yesterday we’ll more or less lose the two matches after this one.
I’m very chilled thank you, let’s see if you are.

In all honesty it's too early to make a judgement on what kind of owner Raj has been till we know how this thing ends. It wasn't the way investment tailed off after the Birge Larsen years that ruined IOR's legacy, it was the rush to hand the club over to two complete sets of chancers, TMH and then Coxberg.

We were dumped in a football lay-by, it was embarrassing and a poor contrast to their arrival.
That should be a warning to anyone.
It might indeed be too early, but that’s speculation for me, time will tell.

I dont see anyone hating harold hornsey, i dont see anyone hating ior even if they did drop us in the shit in the end. Maybe if he had gone after bristol when he appeared to down tools we would not be in this mess. And lets wait till he actually does go before we find out how much of a mess he leaves us in. By the time raj has finished with us even his biggest supporters might start seeing the light. Anyway lets get a win today and lets stop the slide.

Nobody knew how bad an owner gary coxall was until he left.

Hornsey and IOR are probably the best owners we've had in the last 50 years.
Raj has not yet taken us to the brink, although he may well do that in the future.
Unlike TMH and Gibson who following IORs cessation of financing us took us there.

Gibson was a funny one intentions seemed good but obviously lost the plot and others may say different about him. TMH well pure crooks.

You Sir, Are of sound mind.

If i said to someone im nearly 5 million in debt, would they turn round to me and say well yeah your financially stable, with predicted losses for this year and next. As for things not going well on the pitch, crikey thats an understatement id dread to see our record for the last 18 months.

Financially stable?!
Have ya seen the books like!

Obviously not…unless he has a spy satellite up.

He was a roller coaster ride without brakes….any chairman in charge when bailiffs turn up to seize the goalposts can be classed as being a failure.

Speak for yourself, the information was out there ….but plenty of cock eyed optimists chose to ignore it.
I remember us getting a breakfast in Kirkby Stephen as the coaches drove through en route to Morecambe for a very entertaining afternoon there….but as someone at the table mentioned…”that’s what I call a charm offensive”.

5 million what?….. can you confirm this figure as a fact and break it down?
I’d be very interested.

Right there are things in this lot which are sincerely fair but.....

Raj did not 'back' DC. He provided his manager with a budget which he had always done. Its bread and butter football club owner/chairman shit. The exceptional stuff was done by DC and the players that he managed to get the best out of.

There's no vendetta against Singh. If he realised that running the club as a tight ship isn't just about being tight then long may he stay.

He had everything geared up after promotion to be a succesful chairman. He didnt need to throw cash around willy nilly, we had a team their that had potential with just a few adjustments needed.

I refer to my earlier post today re salaries, that is what you have to pay to be successful. That’s why our better players left.

I'm sure the players are indeed leaving for more money, however the amounts are gu⅘esswork. I would differentiate between what the club can afford and what the manager has been budgeted. Thats not to say both amounts aren't the same.

Its timing that matters. We always take the tight fisted but silly approach of waiting until the end of seasons to renegotiate contracts of players we want to keep. By that time other offers are put under players noses. Daft. Chuck a few bob at it, even with release clauses and you get to sell players not have them leave for nowt. Other small clubs are thriving on this approach.

Oats,Molyneux, Sterry, Armstrong,Odosini etc had all been tapped up before the season ended. They were never going to sign for us as they knew what they could get more elsewhere. Take a look at that post on salaries and see what these ex-Pools players are getting and you see why we couldn’t compete.

April/May is no bloody good.

As Humans in work, we always sell ourselves to the highest bidder. Same as selling a house, we take the higher offer, pay more for better quality technology, we pay more for better services.

You Hardly ever see people as contractors staying put in the same place for same amount of money for years. If you do, it's very rarer.

Just pointing out that there are TWO Paul Goughs potentially getting mixed-up here - The local radio DJ, and his son Paul Gough jnr.

Junior lives in Orlando, and likes to portray both himself and his business as being hugely successful. He is rumoured to be buckled when compared with his owld fella, who you'd assume isn't exactly on the bones of his arse himself.

So the Gough family might have a fair bit of lowwer between them, and perhaps they can hoy some of it in the direction of Pools and oust Raj..???

Who knows.

As you were gentleman.

Your posts read just like they did when you backed Hartley to the absolute hilt. Toe curling stuff.

I know young Paul and a few of the Gough's quite well (less keen on his Dad) however think that should he be involved in a consortium, that we could rest assured that he would have the best interests of the club, town and fanbase at heart.

Whilst I very much doubt he could afford to buy it out right or even if he'd want to- he has built up quite a few American contacts that might look at Wrexham and decide they fancy investing a few dollars in little old Pools. Could be the dawn of a new era!..........

Young Gough is buckled, have a look at his record on companies house, when did the old one actually have a full time job since Metro Radio ?

In contracting if you don’t perform on a project you don’t get invited back for the next one unlike players who are on a guaranteed wages no matter how they perform.

Really….? You disappoint me. I gave him 10 matches to prove himself and stand by my pledges, I don’t run around like a banshee wailing and a gnashing my teeth at the first problem.
I have pointed this out on here before so kindly don’t keep repeating a myth, unlike some on here I give people a chance…… then I’ll revise my opinion and did so.
Sorry if my failure to panic annoys some people, but I have no intention of changing a lifetime of being patient.
‘Toe Curling’….oh dear, see a chiropodist,..or wear flip flops,I believe flip flopping is popular on the board now.

Some haven’t ‘enjoyed’ our work experience Jamie, nowt was secure, it was a tough old world but the laughs and the money made up for it

again we would not be having these raj conversations if we had been lucky on the injury front. then the talk would i suppose have been about lack of investment from him because chesterfield were one place above us. think his darlo connection made him open to a lot of the abuse he has received where some could not wait to have a crack on him.

His darlo connection has nothing to do with it, brian honour had a connection to darlo one of the most loved players ever at pools. Do you honestly think accrington we would be 2nd top even without injuries? Injuries happen to every team, we knew at some point they would hit us. We were unlucky they hit us when they did. Pools luck. Apart from mancini and dodds though who is going to turn this mess around. Were going on like we have a good team in the making just missing a few pieces. Right lets get one thing straight chesterfield have spent massively, got players of league one experience, nobody in their right mind expects raj to match or even get close to what they are doing. Crazy stuff that would bankrupt most clubs. What we expect though as a big club for this league is we can outmuscle the gatesheads barnets, altrinchams, halifax etc who are all way above us finacially and on the pitch. Thats just for starters we should really be a football league club. We would still be if the tap wasnt turned off once we were promoted.

You’re right of course..some whingers have never liked him from day one, whatever he did he was never going to be good enough and every opportunity to snipe was taken with relish….oh they deny it like a zebra says it has no stripes, but it’s patently obvious to anyone and their idea everything could be solved by throwing money at every problem echoes the reasoning skills of the average sprout……when this lot goes tits up they’ll step back and claim ‘nowt to do with us’…
We live in interesting times.

This makes no sense whatsoever, simply put, ….how do you define your accepted gap between Chesterfields ‘ Crazy stuff that would bankrupt most clubs’ ( your words)…and….we should….. ‘outmuscle the Gatesheads, Barnets, Altrinchams and Halifax who are way above us financially on the pitch.’
So you have access to the finances of all these clubs to back your theory up then or it’s basically just hot air and waffle.
Have you access to the figures, I’ll hazard a guess, no.
Raj has made a mistake, he needs to pick the right manager. Simple as that.

By the way, we have no right to be a league club, you are there on merit…and the above clubs you apparently look down deserve as much respect as any other club…you appear to have a pecking order in your head of clubs out there.

So are you saying we are now matching chesterfield financially who have gone and picked off league one players? Why do you need to know the finances to actually accept chesterfield have gone all out for it? Its like saying we have no proof wrexham are spending more than us? It common bloody sense. If your signing leagie one quality players your paying out more than signing lads from scarborough halifax etc. Do we need to see club finances of man city to know they are spending more than us? No its common sense. We have no right to be a league club your right, you earn it something our chairman disregarded and took for granted.

Snowy like you we could write about the characters we have worked with and the work experiences we have had over the years. Billy Connolly's initial success was based on his tales about working in the shipyards.
The art of conversation and craic has disappeared as all the younger generation want to do is stare into a mobile phone.

Chesterfield also spent massively last season but got nowhere.
Stockport have spent massively for what, 3 or 4 seasons and managed a single promotion in that time. The great DC with all that money available lost out to little old Carlisle who were on reportedly a very similar budget to ours.
Even this season they had a shocking start which even caused a thread on here to be started to suggest his job could be at risk.
It's football, every aspect is a gamble otherwise it wouldn't be a sport it would be an exhibition with no shock results ever.
All we can do is back the club (not the chairman) 100% - never say die.
Or we could do what some are advocating and keep hounding him to the point he walks and we cease to exist - roll over and die.
Which is preferable, never say die or the latter ( for reference look up Darlo and Bury). That's the reality for us all, whether you tolerate Raj or hate him with a passion - he's all that's keeping us afloat at present.

You’ve just confirmed my question for me.
Try reading what I wrote… I never said we’re competing with Chesterfield financially, that’s in your imagination. It ‘s obvious we aren’t.
You yourself described their budget as ‘ crazy stuff’
I was referring to the middle ground between Chesterfield and Gateshead etc you conjured up.
You deal in vagueness and persist with the belief that throwing ball park imagined figures for budgets into the air can be taken as gospel.
Sometimes it’s not the budget, it’s how you spend your budget.

So lets all blame another manager then. Crazy stuff one day the penny may drop with some that its not the manager.

But we should not be turning on another manager, he can only work with the tools given.

Exactly. And who said thevtap was turned off after promotion? It was reported last season that Carlisle had a very similar budget to ours, so why did they gain promotion whereas we got relegated? Hartley in handing out 2 year deals to his misfits has done long term damage and hopefully we can cling on until the tide is turned and we get some of our better players back.

he certainly has been given some real tools to work with. bit like a shepherd using a saint bernard for sheep herding or a copper out on crowd control with a dachsund.

thats all in the past now and we cannot go back to pre hartley days. can see at times her in the kitchens idea of keeping lee in the job was not as stupid as it first sounded. its hard to have seen him signing worse or other ex managers including jones.

The manager can only work with the tools given?
What a load of bollocks, do you really think k that all the players are signed without Askey being involved? If that were the case then why are so many players he's managed previously. They're his selection of tools to choose from, and his tools to use as he sees fit. I agree we shouldn't get shot of him, but he really needs to get a grip and start getting results again.

Hartley's mistakes are not in the past though are they, we've still got Hastie, Paterson, Ndjoli on the books stealing a wage. Well still be paying Hartley and his staff wages i would think and probably Curle and his staff too. All ling term drains on finances until theyre paid off or gone.

The tap? You mean DC?

Who reported? Their sources?

Precisely.

Look at sites like footsteps.org for details on club budgets they might not be 100% correct but they'll be closer than the guesses based on players are poor so the budget must be poor.
If that was the case why are Chelsea and Man Utd so poor? Answer budgets spent on players that are not good enough or don't fit the system.

Footystats.org

You are absolutely desperate to defend the great leader aren't you? This isn't natural mate.

Fans forget we went on a pre season tour with what was it 8 players. Started last season not being abke to fulfil a subs bench. Start this season and within two months are once again scrambling for players because our squad was so weak. Gary liddle jumping shi0 to sign for the mighty south shields. The list could go on. But once again nothing to see here everything will be blamed on managers.

Not really I'd be as happy as you if he left tomorrow as long as it doesn't mean administration or the end of the club.
There's plenty of sites will tell you much the same if you're open minded enough to look beyond your blind prejudice and hatred of the only bloke around at the moment who is willing to keep us afloat.