Despite our inconsistent and many in peoples eyes poor start to the season we've managed to be only 2 points off a play off place and an even more suprising 8 off the automatic spots.

Despite everything we have kept in touch.

With hopefully a couple of quality additions made to the squad in January could this season actually turn out ok in the end?

Yes it could PJ,& lets hope it does but nothing can alter the fact that
Shrewsbury,Darlington,Barnet & Macclesfield were disgraceful & left you feeling ashamed of the team.
Anyway,onwards & upwards,lets live up to the old cliche & concentrate on the league & go straight back up.

It is important that we don't lose ground on the play offs and promotion pack over the xmas period. I'd settle for being about 8 away from automatic after 30 games and then hopefully then we can put a long winning run togeher. You normally need about 72 points to make the play offs although last season was a freak season in Division Four and about 82 to gain promotion so we do have a long way to go.

sounds like another good three points tonight

sounded pants but most needed and most welcome

football was pants apart from fifteen minute spell but the points are never pants

Both Bullock and Gibb were on the pitch tonight..........

However, we didn't have two suspensions, two ineligible players.....

Wilson out.....

half empty, half full

Wilson is reprieved. On balance we now only need about 20 more points from 26 games to avoid the drop to the Conference, so we should be OK.
Hell, even last season we did better than that in our last 26

or...

Well done Wilson. That's three league wins in a row for the second time. You've now collected as many points in your first 20 games as Cooper did at the same point in our play-off final season.



In this division unless you're riding high at the top or low at the bottom, mid-season positions mean nowt. In Chris Turner's last full season, at this stage we'd just gone from 24th to 8th on the strength of 4 sucessive wins.

It's more about reality than perspective.

It's more about fact than expectation.

If you'd try taking one game at a time instead of the season as a big bite, then maybe you'd spot the differences as we go along.

But I expect old habits die hard eh??

Your average Pools fan isn't ever happy with owt, ever, at any time.

I'm still waiting to see who we can get in during January, and who we get shot of before I get excited about our League position. We beat Wrexham to go seventh, and then went on an awful run which included several Shrewsbury-type performances. That tells me that this squad is inconsistent without the loan players we currently have.
If the loan players go back, and we end up with Proctor/ Bullock etc as our only options then we can well and truly forget about promotion this season. We would win enough games to stay mid-table and that would be about it - but I hope and pray we can inject some new blood on a permanent basis, and some new life into the squad. The club desperately needs this.

But we are winning and I'm lost as to why that doesn't suit your over hyped expectations. Do we have to batter everyone 10-0 and never lose a game?? We've won four out of five and you're still not happy. That's not passion, that's idiocy.

You can't win promotion in one game so you have to take it a game at a time. The game will come where the result DOES guarantee promotion but you have to play a shitload more before that day arrives. Is that the only important game of the season?? Course not!!

How many's quite a few then?? All you ever hear ringing around the ground at Hartlepool is 'shite, shite, shite.' I don't hear anyone shouting 'Keep it in perspective Pools.....'

So what will be good enough for you?? If the answer is promotion, then might I respectfully suggest that you don't go near the place until easter, and only then if we're top six.

Knob sack

Kev, me or Dibbs??

Have you ever seen such an inferiority complex?? It's always you who gives it this 'little old Hartlepool' tag, I don't hear anyone else saying it and I certainly don't.

The whole point is, we'll have ups and downs and expecting anything else is just romantic. Every time we lose one people go off on one tearing up season tickets and threating never to go again, calling for sackings, wanting players out etc etc etc. Unless the team finish the game with blood streaming out of their ears, we're passionless and gutless and mercenary.

That's not passion, that's hysteria. No professional sportsman wants to lose and that's a fact. Some days it clicks, some days it doesn't and they look bad, but it's not attitude. You can see the frustration in them.

Then the crowd starts on about being 'shite.'

That helps as well.

No but you were yesterday, at length. This would lead me to believe a simple equation.

Win = Dibble happy.

Lose = Dibble unhappy.

Therefore the square root of Dibbles brain is purely run on stimulus response, much like an amoeba.

Mr Wilson made an important point the other day when he said that the teams above us haven't suffered a blip yet. He's right, they haven't and we're sitting pretty. remember when we were 14 points clear and we were there to be shot at?? That wasn't comfortable either was it??

As Chaz and Dave once said 'Oh darlin', there ain't no pleasin' you....'

I haven't got low expectations. I've realistic expectations. I know we're a cut above some teams, as good as others and worse than some. I'd like to win more than we lose. We have. I'd like to see us compete, we are competing. I understand that we won't win every game but it's important to take defeat the same as you take winning. It's yesterday, move on. I don't dwell on it until we win again.

How do you want them to show frustration?? Self emasculation in the centre circle?? All this talk of passion is just newspaper bollocks. Of course they care, it's their living after all.

I must admit, after what's happened to Toothless this week - footy is put firmly into perspective. Footy is nothing without the people who follow it, and although it brings people together it isn't the be all and end all. Some people don't like footy at all (strange aren't they?), but each to their own and all that.
I get annoyed at players not putting in the maximum effort when they are out on the pitch and I've paid money to watch them, and I'll say my piece about them on these boards - but my response to that this season has been to stay away from the next game. I'm getting old aren't I?

is that what's wrong with the cricketers then??

Everyone involved in anything loses from time to time. Otherwise there'd only be one of everything wouldn't there?? The trick is to put it behind you and come back punching. We had a great September a bloody awful October, and we had a good November. This should illustrate what I'm on about. All Walsall's months have been good thus far but the bubble will burst. If we have a good December and January, we're right up their necks.

On current form the toughest month we've got is February with Swindon and Walsall. We've had MK Dons, Walsall, Peterborough and Lincoln away already with mixed results. They've all got to come to us and win. Remember Wycombe?? Form team of the division and we made them look ordinary.

So calm down and enjoy it instead of losing the plot every time we have a setback.

Twat.

Actually yes, I have a teaching diploma. Are you a professional 'lovely lovely person'??

I'll settle for top seven meself like.

knee-jerk reactions are fun

end of, FACT!

We all know why you have jerky knees!!

shurrup Kev! the mrs is cleaning round us here!!

I know I can hear the bottles and cans clanking.....

its funny cos its true

that sounds like a cue for a song...