It depends who we have in charge.

With Wilson in charge then I would expect relegation.

With someone remotely intelligent in charge I would expect a top 10 finish (providing we sign a keeper and a decent right back)

I know what your saying but at the moment with the way we've been playing im over the moon with survival, but for next season im not looking forward to it and wont be renewing my season ticket unless danny wilson is removed i fear another relegation scrap next season.

Although I'm not happy with just survival, cos I expected promotion, and play offs minimum this season.
Next season is going to be harder to achieve that, because I expect us to have a new manager, who in turn will bring in his own style of play and players etc that will take time to settle in and as a result we could well end up in a similar position again, but to answer your question I want and expect promotion.

at the end of last season i said i would be happy to stay up this season but next season i would hope for us to be in the top half of the table around the top ten

Talk about a leading question!

Oh dear, some people have actually taken it at face value! (shakes head)

There are only three possible results in this (or any other) league (in any sport): success (i.e. promotion), survival, or failure (i.e., relegation).
Without ANY exception, whatever the league, whatever the sport, the vast majority of clubs fall into the survival category.

I expect us to be an ongoing league 1 (tier 3) team with perhaps the occasional foray into the next division up and maybe a couple into the next division down.

Now give us your reason why you think we have a right to expect better than that.
Give us your reason why we should expect to do any better than the Chesterfields, the Southends, the Stockports, the Crewes?

the oldhams the huddersfields

Cos every dog has it's day and one day..week... season...decade...century...Hartlepool United are going to be the greatest team in the land.

improvement

no matter how minor

a season in the championship would be nice but it would be like a weekend away

not a full three week holiday

patience is what is needed

i'd ratheer take 3 or 4 seasons to rebuild and push rather than fook it up and do a scunny/colchester

I say you grab with both hands any opportunities that come along, all talk of getting promoted when we or any other team is 'prepared for it' is irrelevant, actually getting promoted is the hard part. Despite all the planning and organising, who's to say you'll get promoted, ....'the best laid plans of mice and men' .....
If you won the £10,000,000 on the lotttery would you say..." no thanks, I haven't prepared for this sort of luck and need to do some financial planning, so I'd rather win it in a couple of years time when I'm fully organised"...?..er, no you'd grab it and worry about the 'problems' that come with it as you 'get used to it'.

we have to be happy with survival after the season we have had
but the problem goes further back ior made a mistake in scott and we payed the penalty
if we had not gone down a further season of consolidation may have followed and just maybe we could have made a fist of it this season
with wilson this next season would probably be pretty much the same as this one which is not good enough
he has tried umpteen option and not got it right time to go
ok we bring in a new man and start again on another season of consolidation 15\16 this time next year would do me which i predicted for this season

If we sack Wilson this club will become unmangeable.

We sack Newell when he gets us promoted.

We sack Cooper when he gets us in the play-offs.

Then we could possibly sack Wilson after he gets us promotion and then consolidates us for a season in a higher league.

Another manager would be like our 10th manager in about 10 years, we're like Real Madrid!

As a yes or no question, are you happy with the style of football which Wilson has provided for us this season?

Due to parental responsibilites and financial constraints my appearances this season at Pools have been sparse.

It doesn't take an idiot to work out we have been rubbish on plenty of occasions, his selections bewilder everyone, including the players.

I simply looking at it from a different view point.

I can see both sides of the keep Wilson/sack Wilson argument.

Then again maybe if i had spent money following pools all over the country i would act slightly differently.

But as a "yes" or "no" answer...

No

Too much long ball, square pegs in round holes, and stupid quick fix loans.

Coles, Nolan, and Thompson you mean.

I think when he borrowed Coles he was hoping for more than a quick fix. And people seemed generally happy with Nolan.
So that leaves Thompson as the stupid loan. But is that really any worse than his predecessors with BBM / Danny Byrne / Gerard Nash?
As a counter example, how many people were yelling out for Mike Newell (the only manager immune from such dealings it would appear) to get some loanees in when things started going tits up?

I am happy with survival from this season. Next season I would like us to finish in the top half but if we don't and we stay in this league I will be happy again. There is no point in us trying to get promotion to the Championship becasue if we do go up we don't have the money to buy the necessary players and we would therefore come straight back down - and anyone that would be happy with that needs to give their head a shake. We are primarily a 3rd tier club and we need to live with that.

Anybody who doesn't want to get promoted is the one who needs to give their head a shake.

Worry about the consequences if we manage to achieve it.

Were you cheering when Sheff Wed beat us at Cardiff cos you didn't want to go up?

I don't think we are primarily a third tier club. We are still basically a fourth tier club until we have spent considerably more time in this division.
Does that stop us enjoying being a division higher than we are meant to be? Of course it doesn't. So why shouldn't we enjoy being another division higher still, even if it's unsuccessfully?

After our first ever promotion we came straight back down because we were way out of our depth, but I don't know of anyone back then who regretted having gone up!

See previous post. It means establishing ourselves and being acknowledged as a 3rd division club. The whole of the rest of the world still considers us a 4th division team, you know.

So is consolidation admitting defeat because we're not rising as fast as we dream of rising?

A friend of mine is always selling his flat/house and buying a smaller one to cover his debts. He said that was consolidating

So did he start with a mansion or is he in a garden shed by now?

I think the fact that at the end of next season we will have spent five out of six seasons at this level points to the conclusion that we are not a 4th level club any more!!!!

Oh I haven't heard from him for years. He's probably underneath the Arches at Charing Cross by this time......

cardboard city. It's the future.

No overheads. That was your big mistake, parmo

So your'e saying, if you were a Derby fan you would be enjoying the season they have had? The same would happen to us because we don't have enough championship quality players and we also don't have the money to compensate this.

No, I wasn't cheering when Sheffield Wednesday beat us at Cardiff, far from it, and as nice as it would have been to beat them we would have had a nightmare season in the Championship and people would be on here berating the manager and players because we would have been near the bottom all season

Colchester got found out this term, but last season they almost made it to the play offs!!!!! They pulled off some quite spectacular wins last season, and their fans will cherish the memories of those and give them a source of pride for the rest of their football supporting lives. I'd swap our position for theirs in a heartbeat.

And my Scunthorpe supporting acquaintances are chuffed to fook about beating Cardiff on Saturday.
They're gutted about being found out this season but there's no way in the world they'd rather have spent it in division 3.

precisely. I don't care if we finished bottom, we'd have had one hell of a season visiting some cracking grounds, and the atmosphere at the Vic at almost every game would be electric.
For proof of that, remember the Leeds match, and what it will be like against Forest this Saturday.
Oh what an atmosphere..................
And another thing, over the course of the season we WOULD get some noteable scalps

Must be just me then. I wouldn't want to go up just to come straight back down again, regardless of who we beat in that season. I would rather we built a good, solid, title challenging League 1 team that could realistically do well in the Championship by avoiding relegation.

That's all very well in theory Mr Reeve and it would indeed be nice to be able to say OK, we're ready for the championship now so let's go up a division.
Unfortunately, in practice, you don't get promotion just by saying you are. You have to grab at it when the chance comes because you simply don't get to choose. And if you feel you're not yet ready you just have to try to hang in until you "catch up" with the required standard, a bit like Sunderland are doing this season.

We'll never have the attendances to support us financially in the Championship so i'd rather see us go up there for a couple of seasons even if it meant eventual relegation. Of course we'd all like to stay there and become mid table regulars but with our support it will never happen. I'll be quite happy if we do a colchester or a scunny and feel quite priveleged that I had been supporting pools at the right time to witness it.

None of this will happen with Wilson in charge

Is that an informed "think he will?"

Im all too aware that we would still need to actually achieve the promotion and that it won't just come knocking at the door but I still feel we would be better served building a better team. I understand your point but I think Sunderland had enough quality players to survive at least one season in the Premiership, whereas we don't have the required quality to survive a season in the Championship

Of course not, although I don't quite see the relevance of that.
Let's try putting it another way then: being a consolidated division 3 side means that when we fail we're a poor division three side instead of a poor division four side. We still get to play better teams than when we were permanent residents of division four.
But on the bright side it also means when we succeed we're knocking on the door of the fifth most popular division in Europe. Just don't expect to knock on that door every season, that's all.

ooooh you pedantic get
right i will be happy to be a average div 1 team is that better than a consolidated div 1 team
mid table mediocrity rules
but would also like a visit to the championship then we are guaranteed a third round fa cup tie
as long as pools have a football team no matter which league we are in i'll be there supporting them and coming on a message board to winge about them isnt life great

If people are basing the fact that DW has to go on our underacvievement just think how many more managers have to go from our division!!

Martin Ling would have to go becasue Leyton Orient have been beaten by Port Vale & Cheltenham in the last month - and of course they haven't made the playoffs so he has had a terrible season.

Colin Calderwood would have to go becasue Nottingham Forest should have been challenging for the title but they have only consolidated their play-off place due to a good run over the last few games and other team's failings

Russell Slade definitely has to go, becasue Yeovil finished in the play offs last season and they are in the bottom half this season, he has had a disastrous season

I am happy with survival this season, and although I would have liked higher I would also have settled for being 20th with one game to go and 4 points clear of 21st, guareenteeing League 1 football next season.

As I said in a previous post I do believe we have to try and push on next season, and trying to be realistic (using head not heart) then I would like us to be aiming for a top 10 finish. Some may want more (I actually do) but we need to establish(better word than consolidate) ourselves in this division, and attract players who can in become a nucleus of a side over a number of seasons, something like 3 to 4 consecutive seasons.Giving us a side who know each other just like the teams who got us the consecutive play off's/ promotion/ play off's in higher division.

Bringing players through the ranks like Boyd, Miller ,Sweeney who can then establish themselves as future players in the first team.That is already in place and names are being mentioned as future stars (Rowell Rae Haigh etc)

A vast number of changes and that includes Manager's doesn't work, I know slightly out of our league but if Man U fans had had their way then Ferguson would have been sacked before he won a trophy.

Now I'm not saying if we in a relegation fight in December then NOT to sack Wilson, But to sack, him/ release him now may not be good business sense. He may have players lined up to bring in, and if he does go, how far behind other clubs would we fall behind whilst a new appointment is made, players who we could have got may be snapped up by other club's. How long will the fan's give a new manager who has to start from scratch and get player's who remain to play his way.

We need to be patient. Yes we all want success but at end of the day we want as high a standard of football (League we in ) that we can have and if that means being in League 1 for a number of years, so be it.

I dont want to be a club who have a season or 2 in this division then to be relegated and then bounce back, as we may not bounce back as quick as we want and then spend a couple of season in League 2.

So to reiterate yes top 10 next season (minimum) is my wishes but if it 15th/16th then so be it. Then It may be time for IOR and Wilson to sit down and talk as no progress would have been made.But that change would have to be made as quickly as possible prior to the end of the 2008/09 season so a new manager can be in place prior to the close season so he can then target his own signings.

Explain the Wilson is a goner.WHERE'S YOUR PROOF. Back up that statement, in your opinion he is but apart from IOR and Wilson, everyone's else is just assuming.

Wilson is an arsenal fan?

Wilson is a gonad more like

I expect more of the same relentless fookin' moaning from you bunch of Grandma's.

Let me put the question back to those detractors:

Ready??

Here we go:

How does a team like us, from a town of 82000 people, with gate potential of 6000 max, compete with Leeds, Forest, Swansea, Doncaster, Brighton ,Southend et al??

Particularly when you die hards are deserting the sinking ship for two quid a fortnight.

Yes he has, he was at in the Donny programme.....