Our plight is even more depressing when you see them in the championship pulling a crowd of 2750 last night! That's shocking for that level of football.

That's the crowds we would of got had we struggled for 2 or 3 seasons like them. People, especially football fans are fickle. What Burton are doing is remarkable and the 4-5000 who watched them get promotion should in a perfect world should of stayed with them. The same has happened with Scunthorpe , Doncaster and Rochdale. Looking back HUFC playing football in league 1 was a tremendous achievement, but some of us wanted more, yet our crowds would of dropped season on season , doubt without the cheap season tickets we would be getting any more ( bigger away support excepted) than we are now.

But yes Burton's success is frustrating, but its a big thriving town, and they have a rich benefactor behind them I believe.

Because a lot of fans want to watch you win a game and no matter what league you are in, if you are near the bottom they will walk away.
Thats whats so frustrating with pools in this league if we had done well which alot of us thought we would the crowds would have been good.
I know pools crowds have held up pretty well which is testament to pools supporters that we hope for the best at least just win the odd game.

I agree it's a remarkable rise up the leagues they've had over the years but even in their current predicament I'm surprised to see such low numbers but as you say football fans are fickle.

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say I'm quite happy with them putting effort in. Granted I did expect us to win more at this level than we lost, but I can take a defeat on the chin so long as the players have put 100% in. That just hasn't happened this season, and probably for the majority of the last 2 or 3 seasons.

I don’t know about a big thriving Town it’s about a third smaller than Hartlepool and I thought it was a bit of an odd place when I went, certainly not ‘thriving’ just representive of most Towns in England including ours. It’s not really a Football Town traditionally and is small, without the benefactor part they would be nowhere that level but they have been well run to this point in terms in continuity and having a structure with a bit of cash behind you that goes a long way, we nearly did it. It was a tremendous achievement to stay in the Championship last season though but if Pools were at that level I’d expect the Vic to be rammed.

Well there was Burton Swifts who joined the FL in 1892, but yes football went quiet for a bit in Burton for a lot of years. It may be quiet but certainly felt more affluent in a safe, secure , everyone plodding along,rather than a Southern in your face kind of way, when I visited. Obviously a town having at least half a dozen breweries, some of them massive concerns, will always come across as vibrant to me. Loved the pubs there, and sooner they get back down to the Evo Stik league the better imo.

a lad who i worked with, his daughter was married to Stuart Beavon who was at Burton for a few years. By all accounts the commercial side of Burton (Brewers etc) is fantastic and generates a lot of revenue. Just goes to show what you can do it you have capable people running a football club.

That's a shocking crowd for s side that's in the championship haven't they just signed Darren Bent on loan for Derby to it amazes me how they a manage to pay their wage bill each month with them Crowds fair does they are in the championship and that generates certainly a lot more money than the National League, I don't know if they have money behind them running the club or whatever but it also Amazes me how they survive with crowds like that.

Exactly ! other clubs have things going on at their ground during the week, a thriving club shop etc, our ground is like a cemetery during the week and has been for as long as I can remember, save for a few years under IOR.

The most important aspect of any business is recruiting the right people. Of course if the person at the top of the tree is the wrong person, then there is not much chance of this happening.

Yet all I see during these difficult times are former players and managers angling for a job , and a lot of supporters fuelling their ego's.

People slag off Gary Gibson, but he brought in the right people as did IOR initially, laying the foundations for a period of relative success. All the good people both on the frontline and behind the scenes at the club have slowly been released over the years. Recruitment over the last few years has been on a " I'll get my mate in basis "The club is now a shambles. We need to recruit the right people from top to bottom, we need a chairman/woman who is dynamic, a dreamer with passion and ambition, who knows what they are doing if we are going to really change things for the better at the club, in whatever form that may take in the future.

Wonder how they do it...

https://companycheck.co.uk/company/0410 ... financials

It’s does help Yloop but they’re no fake recruitment company. I bet they don’t even own a fake record company or have ever took out a hundred grand loan to make them the next Reading or Arsenal.

I think an important part of business is not being taken over by a couple of massive fucking conmen.

Gibson got loads of stick because he nearly did what this pair of not nice people are likely to have a major hand in succeeding in, destroying the club, oh and he sacked Alan Murray and brought in Viv Busby. This head of recruitment twat would be proud of that.

I’m quite angry whenever I think of Pools at the minute sorry for taking it out on you Mr Horden I’m sure you don’t mind

Still waiting for coxall and Punjabi records to re-release brimful of asha.

Pirelli only sponsor the stadium name - the owner is called Ben Robinson. Burton have spent next to nothing getting to where they are.

The major figure in any club must be the manager, end of. Get that right person and the rest falls into place. Also helps if owners stand back and let the manager get on with his job.
Which begs the question are the summer signing Harrison's choice or was he lumbered with them....?

A brimful of dollar on the A689 (southbound towards Mario's)

He stated in pre season he was happy, And said he had good footballers to work with.

If he is set in his ways and can,t see what can easily be seen by others then be on his own head.

Not at all PJ ( my sparring partner )

As for Harrison , the fact that he hasn't been given his marching orders yet, says everything you need to know about the club. As I said before, wouldn't surprise me if he is tied up financially in all this in some way, agent/loan/investment etc. The club have no money, yet crowds will fall from now on in, sponsorship from the business community will stagnate and the club shop and ticket office may as well shut.

Placing Harrison on gardening leave may keep the crowds at the level they currently are, and a run of decent results could ignite the other things. As much as I would like to see Bates bombed out of the club , he probably could keep us up, the players would play for him, whereas they must laugh at Harrison. We have Solihull, Torquay, Guiseley at home, should be 7 out of 9 points at least but under Harrison expect 1 out of 9.

I don’t understand this ‘forget about Harrison’ stuff as we have bigger problems to worry about. While we’re still clinging on to life on the pitch, we need the team to perform. Get rid.

1 out of 9 I admire your optimisim.

Quite heavily supported by the brewery I believe.

Which one ? I bet its not BRAINS brewery

Because ‘getting rid’ is completely out of the question the club is teetering on the brink of liquidation and the owners who claim we cost £180,000 a month aren’t going to put in another penny. We have to forget about it because he’s on a three year contract and sacking him means a severance package. Who’s paying for that?

So we get relegated then, regardless of whether new owner comes in or not. Cant afford to sack him , Cant afford to keep him either. That's why I suggested gardening leave and Bates takes over. If Harrison is kept on, it sends out a message to players, the club don't care, why should we. The players as bad as they are, though I believe Harrison and Co havemade a lot of players look worse than they are , must be fed up of Harrison chopping and changing

Don’t sack him. Put him on ‘other duties’, no one could do a worse job. If by any chance a saviour does appear (I live in hope) it would be ironic if we were relegated. Cover all possibilities and costs nothing more than we’re paying now if you promote from inside the club.

Agreed, hoy him on gardening leave, get Bates in, couldn't get much worse really

Seriously, could he sue the club for 'constructive dismissal'?

Unlikely, but he would have to have a gardening leave clause in his contract otherwise he could claim breach of contract.

I was on gardening leave once.... never touched it. Fuck em!

Bates as a replacement for Harrison, I think not, first he would need a
Chauffeur (added cost) ,secondly would the players respect him after breaking the law?

They employ 254 people and still made £1.3m profit last year

Fair play to them, I always understood they generate extra revenue through conference facilities created when they built the new stadium which was what uncle Ken was trying to achieve was it not ?

Who knows Ian ! you would of thought that would of been long term plan, but after 2007 I reckon they would of sold us a dummy ( anything to get out ) as they OIL prices dipped and the novelty wore out and realisation that they couldnt take us any further bit in.

I would say they wanted the extra revenue to replace the funds that dried up but to be reinvested back into the club ?

But then I'm very gullible having believed in Coxhall and Pam

Who knows? is it worth talking about now? we are were we are, we need to stop the bleeding, rather than worry about how it came about. Onwards and upwards in whatever shape or form. The only thing on the agenda is that a decent standard of football in Hartlepool needs to be maintained.

Decent football?

I thought we were 'dogshite'?

Just asking for a friend, like

It's absolutely worth talking about. There's nothing wrong with scrutinising a business model with a view to plagiarisation then comparing our context.
Some megacorp tried to patent their business model a few years back. They didn't get very far though.

I said we were one of a group of dogshit clubs, based on others perception of us and our historic lack of success and poor ground etc.

If you allow yourself to be influenced by others perception of you, you deserve all you get.

Gibson was a man who wrote a bouncy cheque to a widow and left a trail of debt which hung over the club for nearly a decade, hope that clears a few things up

Yeah it didn't end well , but he had a bit of class/style about him, recruited well , and built arguably our best team in the last since the 68 promotion side. That is what I was alluding too, I'm sure he wouldn't of deliberately sent a cheque to Mrs Knowles, knowing it would bounce.

Yeah it didn't end well , but he had a bit of class/style about him, recruited well , and built arguably our best team since the 68 promotion side. That is what I was alluding too, I'm sure he wouldn't of deliberately sent a cheque to Mrs Knowles, knowing it would bounce.

I think Gibson was always flying by the seat of his pants meaning the club was always on a financial knife edge. My mam worked in Northern Electric at the time and more than once he came in with a bag loose cash including coins to pay an electricity bill before a night game to make sure the lights came on and temporarily take them out of the red. He certainly wasn’t in the same League as some of the crooks involved in the last two years. For a start he did invest a lot of his own money into the club when he didn’t have that much to start with and he lost it. We did have a good team for about two years thats true as well, but the ground was an eyesore which I think is part of the reason the crowds didn’t pick up to the extent they should have but he was all a bit short term, it was never going to last.

Fair and balanced assessment PJ.He bankrupted the club and bankrupted himself in the process. Not wanting to condone the mess he got us into, but it was before the days of tv cash, huge season ticket sales and the funny money to develop the ground,gates were often as low as 2500, despite been near top of the league.

On the field it also it's worth remembering what happened in the 1992/93 season when the wheels finally came off financially. The team went from beating a Premier League and being in the promotion hunt at the turn of the year to not being able to even score a goal and sliding towards the wrong end of the table, and we had some cracking players. Alan Murray had done a great job from promotion from nowhere, a good first season in a tough League then a great start to that one, he was sacked a few months after the Palace game and replaced by Viv Busby, a man who made Craig Harrison look like Pep Guardiola.

I'm not wanting excuse the current players, who aren't fit to lace the boots of the likes of Andy Saville and Brian Honour, or the manager who probably isn't fit to lace the boots of Alan Murray but it just shows how much of an impact off the field uncertainty can have on the field. The club is not a good place for anyone involved right now, from people in the office to players and coaching staff. They all have bills, they all have mortgages and families to support and they are worried about where next months wages are coming from. So even though the common consensus is that the players are crap and the manager is worse it's why I find people actually blaming them and especially him for this currently situation because of the teams position in the League about as ridiculous and stupid as it comes. If we'd won a few more games what difference would that have made to this absolutely dire financial predicament that has been at the making of chancers and conmen for the last two years?? Can I suggest no difference at all apart from possibly having a few more points to play with of administration rears it's head but even that is a side issue to the bigger picture here.

Disagree about Busby , Harrison much worse. Still think points are worth fighting for, if a miracle happens and someone comes in , we need to be in this division. Totally understand though if the players hearts aren't in it. That 92/93 season was something else , talk about contrasts.