Hi, I'm a Swindon fan, and as you all know we play you guys this weekend. Obviously it's Danny Wilson's first game back at Victoria Park since he left 18 months ago. I just wondered what your opinion of him is, and the circumstances he left Hartlepool. Will he get a good reception. I can tell you now, that your loss is our gain. He has completely turned us around from relegation battlers to promotion contenders in the space of a year. By far the best manager we've had for 20 years. Anyway, all the best for the rest of the season, after Saturday of course!!!

He left under mysterious circumstances,whether that was an approach from Swindon that caused that we don't know, and to be fair he did'nt do a bad job in his time here.

A lot of our fans would compare him as a better Manager than the current incumbent.

I don't see any reason why he'd get a bad reception as he did a decent job here, but I can't see a standing ovation either.

As long as he doesn't mind being on the end of a 2-0 defeat I don't foresee any problems

He was a decent manager but he chopped and changed the squad too much for my liking. However he was a far superior manager to our current one.

I cant make Saturday unfortunately but if I was there then there would be more chance of me applauding your manager than ours, thats for sure.

Wilson was Mr Anonymous to me, he came, he did a job, but he never got close to anybody. I always thought of him as the contractor manager, here to do a job, then on to the next one. He had no rapport as far as I could see with the fans always seemed s distsnt bloke, concerned only with ther players, mildly embarrassed almost, something of an enigma. Would I want him back... ? No...! We need a leader on and off the pitch to get us all involved, we,ve had five years of drifting in that sense and now we need to get back on course

It's interesting really as you guys have gone backwards since sacking him. As I say he is the best manager we have had since Glenn Hoddle almost 20 years ago. I'm guessing that Chris Turner is not very popular amongst your fans. I think you will stay up, your home form is good. That will see you safe i think, after Saturday obviously!!

You reckon?!

I wouldn't say we've gone massively backwards we just haven't gone forwards.

Nobody was really bothered when he got sacked, some were delighted, we didn't know at the time he wasn't getting replaced though!! I reckon if he'd been given what Turner has had to work with in the transfer market we'd be in a far better position than we are now.

So what is Turner a director of football or something?

Director of Sport.

Our Quoits team are on fire.

No, a Director of Sport.

Slightly different in that he also looks after our Hockey, Badminton and Curling teams.

Our left winger Richie Humphreys is ever present for all 3 teams since records began.

Wtf director of sport. That's a new one.

We'd like a new one!

my memories of Wilson.....

Seemed to stumble onto a winning formula in League 2 after a few months of relative crap.
Then came a mini golden era....."We are unbeatable".....and we were!

Refused to regularly start or play Joel Porter, one of our best EVER players.

He seemed to have got bored by the start of the League 1 campaign.

signed some good players (Liddle, Jones, Monkhouse etc)

Signed some AWFUL ones (Antwi, Gibb, Elliott etc)

Left us with a completely unbalanced squad.

Loved to tinker and play people out of position (due to the massively unbalanced squad)

No rapport with fans & no intention of building one

Massive rapport with players.

Did the job we wanted doing (promotion)

Got the impression, he would be a top manager when he found the right club, maybe thats Swindon?

Good luck to the fella, hopefully we will be gloating and singing gloatful (made up word?) songs towards him come the end of the match on Saturday.

It's not Barcelona have one.

We are working to the Barcelona model.

We even have Messi, you should see the state of Turners office.

We were infact 13th and unbeaten in 3.

Mister B some of your criticisms could be leveled at Turner now!

Wilson did a good job and when we played well under him in league 2 we were a fantastic side to watch and almost as good as the side Neil Cooper almost took to the Championship.

The second option.

i wouldn't disagree with that

Hmmm.

Some of these posts are a bit light on the actual facts.

Wilson was our third most succesful manager ever. Go Compare the stats if you're in any doubt.
He took us to automatic promotion for only the 4th time in our history at the first time of asking. He acheived several club records along the way.
He took us to our 4th ever highest finish ( 15th) the following season.
We were in exactly the same league position the following season when he left/got the push.

No rapport with the fans? -compared to whom? Apart from Cooper I can't think of anybody with a great rapport with the fans in the last 20 years.
Our current manager & most of the previous incumbents have had little rapport with the fans.

Danny ,quite clearly made mistakes along the way but also generated a great deal of success by 'Pools standards.

He wasn't afraid to drop players when he thought he needed to although we didn't always agree with him.
He also had the bolox to admit his mistakes & put players back in the team eg. Humphries & Porter.

As noted he had much less backing in terms of finance etc than the current incumbent & less than others too.

Wilson has now taken two clubs to promotion, one to a play-off final & his current club are well placed to make the play-offs.

Our current manager & most of the rest we've had can't hold a candle to Wilson.

We were stupid to let him go.

you mean he changed his mind......a bit like Turner with McSweeney for example.

there was no admitting of mistakes what so ever

More accurately; we were stupid not to give him the backing needed for league one success and for not allowing him to manage without a hand tied behind his back.

We were only stupid to let him go, because of who he was replaced by. I'd take Wilson over Turner any day, but you only get rid when you've someone just as good or better available.

When IOR appoint from within the club (Scott & Turner), we do badly. When we bring in someone new (Turner 1st time, Newell (not quite, but we did get promotion),Cooper, Wilson) we do well.

History doesn't bear you out Misterb.
He brought Humps back to the club after sending him out on loan & put him back in the team.
He also put Porter back in after dropping him etc.

He put right more errors than any other manager I recall or does that not fit your theory.

He remains one of our most & indeed one of the footy league's most succesful managers ever & we got rid.
Fooking stupid.

"We were stupid to let him go".

Maybe, or maybe he was clever enough to go and put ultimatums to the owners when he knew he had a job waiting for him if they called his bluff. I'm convinced he demanded more money to spend or else and Hodcroft said, "Fine, piss off" or words to that effect.

Wilson spent a fair bit on wages and the results weren't great once we were back in the third division. I don't think he deserved the sack but he hadn't done enough to deserve blind backing for whatever he wanted. Wilson is certainly a better manager than Turner but, in my opinion, he is also a bit of a sly tosser whereas Turner is essentially decent.

In conclusion- bollocks to the pair of them, new blood needed next season but for now just back Pools.

The fact that Porter was left out in the cold for so long was nothing short of madness. So to finally bring him back in, several months later, is not the sign of a great tactician

he advised all players signing for us to stop off at throsten cash machine on the way

Remember as well the epic fallout with Monkhouse following his admittedly idiotic sending off at Rochdale - Wilson seemed to be holding a grudge, against someone who had been one of our best players that season, which lasted months.

Some of the football wasn't too good IMO, and he seemed loathe to sign full-backs, despite our apparent vulnerability to the long diagonal ball. I suspect like many I wasn't shedding too many tears when he left, but then again if I had known then that Turner would be in charge this long I might have thought different.

Wilson wasn't bad for us, but people never really warmed to him - the feeling was that we were always a job for him to do until a tastier opportunity came along. After match comments were so predictable that they could easily have been prepared at the start of the season. Fair play to him for what he's done at Swindon, but I doubt he would ever have done the same for us in this division....

Maybe wilsons budget only allowed him to bring in shite like Budz and Barrett.
I can only suggest that Wilson only had a fraction of what Turner has had to spend.
Given that Wilson has received a favourable budget from the Swindon chairman he seems to have spent wisely.

Chip, come on, look at the stats will yer. An Old Poolie like you knows he was a more succesful manager than virtually anybody else in our history. My point was he was our third most succesful manager ever.

If you don't believe me look at the club records or if you want a really quick reference point check out pages 379-380 in the Pools Centenary book.

If you take, for example managers who have been at Pools for around 100 league games Danny comes in at just shy of a 51% rate of possible points gained.

Cooper comes in at 51.5%.

Murray comes in at 48.5%

Knowles in at 52.2%.

Clough at 49.2%.

Westgarth at 47.1%.

If you want to be a pedant & go way back we could include Fred Priest at 55.4% but even me & you weren't around then.

Inc' Priest, then Danny's 4th. If you go by post war managers he's 3rd.

Yes, he signed some shyte. Name me a single manager who hasn't.

Stats in league 3 -poorer yeah, 4th ever highest finish, yeah, that too. On track for a possible improvement, second time round ( slight, I concede) , 15th in the first season in Div 3. 15th when he left/was pushed out.

We got rid of him -if that's what happened, far too early.

Same with Cooper, possibly the same with Newell & the same with Murray although we can't blame that last one on I.O.R.

I only hope the Tubster manages to turn it round but I doubt it.

I think we'll rue the day we let Wilson go.

why would you want to keep someone here who doesnt want to be here?

It was blatantly obvious he had itchy feet, we were right to let him go.... We were wrong not to replace him properly

Wilson used us as a stepping stone and i myself did not have a problem with it.. He gave us some new club records and a promotion at the first time of asking.. Job done in my opinion and now Uncle Hovercraft has gone backwards by reappointing Tubby.

End of

I'm pretty sure we were 13th and then a 3-0 win in Turner's first game took us to 10th

West for manager!

Well, Mike Newell is available...

Yes, a mistake -& which Pools manager has never made mistakes.

In my view Cooper & Wilson are two of the best three managers we've had in living memory.

It's not strictly relevant to this post but I recall it was Wilson's Bristol City who defeated Coop's Pools in the '03/04 season.
I know our luck was shyte in the second leg but Wilson got his team to the P.O final that season, Cooper didn't.

Cooper & Wilson were both great managers at Pools & as noted ,are up there as our most succesful along with Cyril.

To not properly acknowledge Wilson's contribution to our club is plain daft.

Maybe you can't ........ but Danny was up there with the most detached of them and just because YOU think that all Pools managers in the past twenty years had no rapport, apart from Cooper, doesn't make Wilson any better for it.
He had no rapport and he went.... and I recall no day of mourning, that was his impact.

I'll tell you what I think is daft..................comparing Wilson's record at Pools with that of Fred Westgarth, and completely ignoring the fact that Westgarth's achievements were exclusively in the third tier.
Finishing second in Div Three north is our all time highest achievement, but it seems to be getting ignored. We were second only to the champions. We haven't finished second to the champions in the third tier since............ under anybody.
Wilson's average in the third tier for Pools is nowhere near the 47% achieved by Westgarth, no matter how it's dressed up.
One and a bit seasons in the third tier under Wilson against FOURTEEN under Westgarth................you're having a laugh.

*Cough*

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31083&p=372978&hilit=westgarth#p372978

Quite

As has been said, he came, did a job and went without really growing any affinity with supporters. I get the impression he was looking for another job from the day he started.

Also not many Managers would get away with hitting the Marina bars 45 mins after the home games finished either.

He knew we could not go any further without some financial backing - and IOR made it clear that this was not going to happen. He also had a Director of Sport sitting on his shoulder (or monkey on his back if you prefer) going back to Ken, probably full of tales about how he could do better. This clearly put Wilson in a no win situation and as soon as a good offer came in from somewhere showing a bit more ambition he decided to go. In hindsight it seems like he made the correct decision.
He may not have built up a good rapport with the fans - but again I suspect this was not all down to him. After the experience with Newell I think the club probably withdrew into a shell and stopped the previously experienced supporter/manager talk ins etc.
Some poor signings yes - Antwi for example, but also some good ones as well.

That means you make Wilson a better manager than Hoddle! He's good, but he's not that good. Well, at least not yet.

I was one of those who though that, because Wilson had been sacked by Hartlepool, MK Dons and, most of all, Bristol City, he certainly wasn't good enough for us.

Oh how I've been proved wrong. Give the man the freedom of Swindon. Whatever happens in the run in, we've had a season to remember.

We're not Bristol City. If we were to be sitting below half way in the second tier we'd have to be happy (assuming you don't mean 20 points adrift at the bottom). We've been 10 years away from the second tier after spending all but one season in the 90s in the top two divisions. Any Town fan would settle for lower half second tier football in 2011 if you offered it to them now.

Good luck to Danny at STFC.
Plenty of Poolies seem content with totally ignoring his contribution to HUFC.
Seemingly he had no rapport with the fans if you listen to some of the Bunkerites. Plenty of rapport with the players if you listen to the guys who played for us.
Automatic promotion, record breaking runs etc count for nothing with some of my fellow Poolies because they were in the 4th Division even though it' s one of only a handful of actual promotions in the Club's history.
The over-active rumour mill here reckons Wilson was only ever using Pools as a stepping stone to bigger things-yeah right- like a move to the Robins!!! No offence but I seem to recall that you were fellow relegation contenders.
They also seem to think Danny had the move lined up before he left Pools.
Three Robin's fan I spoke to yesterday confirms this is shyte & that it was defenitely AFTER Wilson had left Pools that he was interviewed for the Swindon job.

Latest rumour up here- Danny was a drunkard & so it goes on.
Oh & apparently he had millions to spend & apart from Turner no other 'Pools manager has ever had any money or backing from the Board.

It could be argued that Wilson has failed at MK Dons, Bristol C & Weds but he has also gained two promotions, has your lot in the play-offs, got City to a play-off final after beating our lot & also acheived one of the highest ever finishes our Club has ever acheived.

Good luck for the rest of the season. I wish Danny was still at the Vic- Your gain is our loss.

Well said.

Let's not delude ourselves though, at this level every player and manager sees us as a stepping stone.

If a Championship club came in for Wilson now then he'd be off.

I don't think it was a done deal with Wilson, we were trying to get Richard Money who was then at Newcastle in some capacity or other, but Newcastle moved the goalposts at the last minute and it fell through. If Swindon had poached Wilson from Hartlepool then compensation would've been involved.