... and browsing through them game by game really brings home how tough it's going to be on the road this season. If we (or Carlisle) manage to finish with a good away record it will be a monumental achievement.

Managing to stay in this league would be a good achievement looking at that fixture list!!

why just us or carlisle

location,location,location

The Tuesday night games have been quite kind to us, at least.

Seeing the fixtures does bring it home to you how hard it is going to be this season. We definitely still need a few more signings, and they need to be good ones...

First half of the season looks particularly difficult, the second half and the final two months looks like the place we'll pick up points.

If we are in the bottom 8 come Christmas we must not panic, we need to stay together and power through to the end of the season.

Seeing the fixtures in black and white...

Tells me I've got 7 Saturday shift swaps, or holidays to arrange. Or find myself another job that doesn't involve Saturday working. I only had 4 last season.

of course everyone here is basing their opinions on team names and history rather than how good their squads actually are.....they are in league one for a reason!!!

Well I'm not. i'm basing my opinion on their being at the other end of the world and on knowing how badly Pools usually travel!

i imagine that there will be an improvement in our away results, it shouldnt matter how far we have to travel, if we are well organised and improve our defending we will be fine

They'll have a better pull than us though, they already have stronger squads and can attract better players than we can.

I know Yeovil seem to do ok, and all this tired from travelling is bollocks I travel from Huntingdon to Oxford every weekend to see our lass and travelled from Hartlepool to Oxford on Sunday I was ok to do stuff on the monday its a crap excuse

What we need is a statistical guru who can correlate points won with distance travelled.

Just had a brief look at the Loids fixtures, and it just reconfirmed the gulf between league 1 and 2 now. Aldershot away and Bury at home for their start.

I am not a statistical guru but I did seen us win at Yeovil and Swindon last season so travelling with an overnight stay might not be too challenging for professional footballers.

Whats wrong with travelling I dont get it surely a stop overnight would prevent this people are just looking for excusses regarding distance the reason we probably got relagated in those seasons was not becasue of distance but because we were crap. The same goes for last year we were rubbish at the back and people away from home didnt give the same performances as at home.

Distance has nothing to do with it people like exeter, southampton etc have to travel as much as us (granted not so much this season as it being League 1 south). From my recent memory of pools from 90 onwards I have always remembered that Pools have had a rubbish away record.

One thing distance is almost sure to affect is away support. It's another matter whether that support makes any difference or not.
For example we had a large away contingent at Scunny last year. Despite the good support the players just didn't turn up.

Hi guys and gals. Specially blondie.
Popped onto your site to find out a little of what you are about.
I support Southampton but also football. Looking at the fixtures like all fans will be doing and I am left wondering how they pick the fixtures. Common sense would surely decree that local fixtures would serve clubs best on a night game.
Seeing this seasons fixtures does make us realise how far we have fallen. Worse if we don't get the buyer doing the deal soon we will be worse of than last season as we won't have time to buy any players.
A couple of your lads have already signed into our little forum and we hope we can get a couple more of you pop over to ours. HOTP and MadJohn thanks for popping by.
Before I go I must wish you all good luck for the coming season. If you must finish in front of us let it be because you came first.

"how far we have fallen"

For the first time in 50 years we will be playing in the first round of the fa cup. Whereas we were getting turned over by small fry we are now one of the small fry. Time for some of our lot to realise we are where we are. I don't get to many away games now but if any of you do get down to st Marys I can tell you where to go for a pint or two and mix with us. Part of the fun is the banter.

The worst thing southampton did was leave the dell imo.

That ground was small, big teams didn't like it, and they won games there and stayed in the top league.

Should have stayed.

Just had a look and it's another concrete shit-pit. Looks like the Riverside. I'll be giving that match the swerve.

It's just the same as all the others, stadium of light, darlo, derby county etc

when we were there on tour we played not too far from that ground, its a carbon copy of the sewerside and the surrounding areas not a million miles away either.

pubs near by were dire [although we went into the centre and found a wetherspoons where you could get G+T for a quid!!] as was the venue.......

Rupert Lowe more like

They had a nice long ride on the gravy train, but personally I say they can get fooked

I can say with full confidence that most of us on here come first.

my right hand doesn't do that, so my bell end always wins 1-0