Are supposedly specialists in recruitment aren't they? Quite apt that they struggle so badly to bring players in. Another poor transfer window out of the way, not that we expected any different from a chairman who has talked a lot and delivered on very little so far. I'm sure a lad that has hardly scored for two years and a young lad will please many but with a manager that's lost the plot and a team devoid of any sort of organisation we will struggle to survive this year.

Yeah was expecting much more with what Coxall said before window opened.

However James is a better player than Mandron, Thomas can deliver a cross and hopefully Laurent can actually put in a tackle in midfield. Whether this will be enough remains to be seen.
Main issue is over the last three seasons we've had cash injections (Baldwin, James and TV appearance money) which needed to be used to seriously upgrade the squad and once again this has not happened.

Knowing Moore Laurent will be on the bench after a game and if James scores Saturday he be dropped the week after.

To my count the new owners have made 10 permanent signings in the 6/7 months they've been involved with the club. Signing the likes of Carl Magnay and Billy Paynter in the summer showed an ambition to sign players who are very much at the level required to be competitive in this league. To lay blame for our current plight at the door of the owners is missing the point hugely.

There's not a Pools manager in recent memory who's had the backing that Ronnie Moore has had since arriving at the club. Far from inheriting a team full of 30-something journeymen, he's been given the resources to build a team which has pace, some semblance of technical ability (Woods, Magnay, Paynter, Thomas, Oates, Featherstone) and a top goalkeeper in Trevor Carson. The teams we're playing on a weekly basis do not have better footballers, man-to-man, than we do. They appear to be coached better and seem to be more of a unit than we are.

Whenever Pools lose a football match, Ronnie Moore blames his players and asks for new blood. Almost at his every wish he is granted access to a loan market which, injuries aside, we should need feel it necessary to use.

Was is Gary Coxhall who will have insisted on us signing loanees like Micheal Mandron? Was is f%ck.

A situation has been manufactured whereby the easy scapegoat for the current situation is the lack of signings. If we were playing a consistent team on a weekly basis and we were being soundly beaten by better teams, I would agree that more signings would be necessary. As it is, we have a manager who is using the resources at his disposal incredibly poorly, instead opting to gamble on short term loans to provide him with the same fix he luckily stumbled upon last season.

The problem is not with the owners, its with the manager of our football team.

For what it's worth I think the OP is harsh. I have no doubt signing players is very difficult, signing decent players even more so.
I think criticism of tactics is warranted but personally I don't doubt the effort to sign players is there. I don't imagine decent players are queuing up to join and there have been some good signings, as I see it.

Pretty certain most of the permanent signings were in place before the takeover even occurred, I doubt IOR would have sanctioned signings outside their wage structure before takeover was finalised (certainly did'nt for TMH).

End of the day the squad/team imo is well above the standard needed to comfortably survive in this league. If we go down il be blaming Moore not Coxall.

Mind there's some right miserable, negative fuckers on this board lately.

Yeh thats righr, cos theres shitloads to be positive about like.

Heres an even more negative post for you to scoff over.

I have only seen this team three times this season.

The keeper apart I think they are generally fucking shite.

Fourth bottom and struggling yet some think the players are actually good but just badly coached.

I think thats very hard to believe.

But I know there are not many in the current team I would pay to watch.

Bowing to your superior knowledge. Any opposition players catch your eye in those three games who you think we should have bought?

How many neew players did you want bringing in this season ? Surely it's in double figures right now ! Hopefully Luke James & Billy Paynter will bang a few goals in for us in the next few months....

Spot on!

The takeover was in the process from early March and we announced it when it was done, not like TMH. When we signed the likes of Carson it was a couple of days before the takeover. The takeover would have been agreed long before, just a case of working through the hand over process and announcing it when that was done.

We could have easily have signed a lot more players on free transfers which would have been criticised, instead we have tried pay for players which hasn't happened. Baring in mind it was Coxall's first window with a decent sum of money to spend like we did, he was probably naïve in being so public about bids and such or overly ambitious in targets.

We could have easily done nothing and said nothing

Sounds like some people are yearning for the good old days under Uncle Ken. Nice to spend some money but some people on here remind me of the old Harry Enfield sketch where the scousers turn up in 'that London' and can't spend their windfallzZ money they had quick enough and end up with nowt.

Popular opinion on the bunker is that its all Ron's fault our prediciment which I totally agree with but at the end of the day there's only one person who can do anything about it and he isn't !

I don't get this harking back to the good old days of Ken Jong Il. I can't think of too many things that happened to HUFC that were worse than the Ken Hodcroft years.

that has to be a wind up?

IOR (and uncle ken) were owners when hartlepool were at their best ever in terms of position in leagues and we had our most consistent success. Sacking people like wadsworth when 13th in league 1. how mad does that sound at present.

Yes, for the final 3/4 maybe even as many as 5 seasons, they basically wanted nothing to do with the club it seemed. Cutting the budget season after season and basically just letting us struggle to the shit that we have become now. If coxall and co achieve half of what IOR did in their first 10 years, i'm sure us fans would be happy.

No wind up at all. IOR and Uncle Ken or was it Berge Larsen? There was a vast difference when Larsen backed away.

Speaking of the good old days, I see Garry Liddle turned down Pools so he could go 'down South' and join up again with Danny Wilson and Sir Humphrey Ritchies at Chesterfield.