A couple of minutes away from taking our place in the National League and they're in the 5th round of the FA Cup with a home fixture against Man City to look forward to. How unlucky are we by comparison. Does make you wonder what we have done to deserve the bad luck we have had over the last few seasons.

I notice both Padraig Amond and Josh Laurent scored last night in the Cup. Luckily we have goal machines Lewis Hawkins and Conor Newton in our ranks.

Not bad luck, but bad management, bad decision making, fans who cant see the wood for the trees, and are divided.

pools fan would still be divided if we were 10 points clear at the top of the premier league with some moaning about too many spanish internationals in the side and chips and burgers being replaced by their poncy equivelents.

‘Fans who can’t see the wood from the trees’

Please elaborate?

I’d say the biggest reason we have gone one direction and Newport are showing signs of improvement is the same reason as why we ended up in that position on the last day of that season. Gary Coxall and his pal Goldberg who robbed the club blind conducted a fire sale of any our players they could cash get for then moved the club on to asset strippers who had been stupid enough to lend them cash.

What that has and what blame lies with any of the fans is anyone’s guess. Most fans apart from a painfully thick but loud minority were onto them fairly quickly but were powerless to prevent the damage that had already been done financially. I’d call that bad luck for us lot.

no fan asked for coxall and goldberg we just had to suffer em and could do sod all about them or any of their actions.

Exactly and the fans are still suffering as a direct result of those actions.

So , on what date , do we actually stop blaming Coxhall and Goldberg for our shit situation?.

Lucky Gillingham didn't do too badly either, with two premiership opposition games.
Luck is supposed to even itself out over time; I can't wait!

And Newports players fought for thier survival,Unfortunatly a lot of ours didn't.

So Singh identified money for next season , knowing it would have to be used to pay off legacy debts rather than buying of new players or he identified money for next season and didn't know about the legacy debts? I wasn't aware anyone knew what contracts any of our players were on, useless or otherwise. We must of had a chance to get rid of some players whose contracts were up, but decided not to, Coxhall cant be blamed for that.

I'm confused

Why get narky? no I wouldn't. I missed that about the unexpected bills , tax I suppose. If that is the case, yes I would rather him of been aware of it , but I appreciate he isn't Superman and we all make mistakes and we all have to expect the unexpected from time to time.


Back to football, it doesn't look good then, so what as a club are our expectations for the rest of this season and next?. I wish the club would just come out and say SURVIVAL is our expectation , and anything else is a bonus, instead of all this promotion/play off bollocks , just to hoodwink people into buying ST's

Fair do's Phil. I would of settled for mid table at start of season and still would. This season can still be rescued, start again and promotion form from now until the end of the season. I realise the club cant be too honest, they have to sell ST's not put people off buying them, but I just wish there was better communication , with the club setting out what they hope to achieve in a year, 3 years , 5 years, it would save all this second guessing and reading of tea leaves. If he said promotion then that for me needs to be retracted and replaced with mid table again with possible play off push, that way no one gets disappointed or feels let down.

Newport deserve all the luck going after what they had been through.
Had it not been for IOR you could well have been relegated out the league long ago having diced with it several times in the past.
I wouldnt say you have been unlucky at all.

For all Darlo as a club have been through you have never had outright crooks taking over your club and stealing large amounts of cash from it.

George Reynolds and his legacy was ultimately why you went to the wall, the minute you lost Feethams you were doomed. Please don’t tell me you didn’t buy into the we’re so rich it’s unbelievable period? You thought you had hit the jackpot for about 18 months. IOR never promised anything or invested huge pots of cash all in one go but they were very good owners supported by a sensible business minded chairman.

Everyone since George may have had some ulterior motive but they all lost cash investing and trying to make a go of your club.

Can you not see the massive difference between that and what happened at Pools? No club in The Football League now should be in the position we ended up in half way through the relegation season, we have a decent loyal fan base and a lot of money filters down to League Two clubs these days. Where did all of that go?

We were both unlucky in different ways but I don’t see the need to be salty about us actually having good owners for a bit.

It’s called green-eyed resentment, the long years of Pools comparative success under IOR still rankle with the likes of LS no matter how much they pretend that it didn’t bother them. I suspect that many Pools fans secretly harbour such feelings regarding Darlos magnificent FA trophy success of a few years back and the sparkling years under Martin Gray......

Comparative success, I like that. Thank god for Darlo , a shittier club than us, who in their pathetic existence only managed to win a league title and the FA Trophy at Wembley.

think when clubs actually come out with rubbish like we have a promotion side next season brought about by the managers pre season recruitment and by the end of september you are looking at the bottom half of the league table instead of the top fans take this flustration out of the players and manager. if no statements were made in the first place maybe people would have a bit more patience . think anyone who buys a ST may have their own hopes but deep down has a feeling whats going to happen good or bad.

If no statements are made then people will just say "why should I buy a season ticket?"

You can't have it both ways, of course our ambition is to get promoted, every club says that. It's football though, it's not a promise you can make.

[quote="yloop"]If no statements are made then people will just say "why should I buy a season ticket?"

so the club comes out with something like, the next season will be a season to be remembered for all pools fans with a nothing but promotion aim from the club. with that will there be a situation where everyone believes every word and pools have record season ticket sales. no i really doubt it. fans are not as stupid as those at the top actually think they are. football clubs in general seem good with rallying calls for fans with OTT statements for the season ahead. if they actually told me we are in february now i,d check my calendar for a 2nd. opinion. as my old mam used to say, if you have nothing really to say just keep your mouth shut.

I only support Pools because they do the good statements.

There is room for improvement though. Ideally I'd like a five year plan that culminates in qualification for the Champions League as a minimum. Several promotions involved but being realistic I'd settle for a top four finish in our first season in the Premier League. I don't understand why the club don't offer this in a statement, people would be shitting themselves at the idea of missing a future season ticket holders only tie with Barcelona and they'd fly out.

And what have Darlo got to do with what I said?
Were you not perennial strugglers for virtually all your existence before IOR made you into a successful club?
My point was the Newport fans deserve a bit of luck in that they went bust and came back the hard way.
Your luck was that IOR did make something of you as a club and if they hadnt you could well have been non league a long time before you actually were. That was your luck.

But we lost our league status because we were taken over by outright crooks intent on lining their pockets who’s only care was how long they could get away with it for. We might have lost our League status before the fact is we didn’t before those chancers rode into town.

That’s what I was talking about not IOR. I would say for us fans that was a little unfortunate and as you know we’re the ones who suffer!

I always view Newport and us like a sliding doors moment.

We went down but they stayed up. They are the version of us that stayed up.

Bastards


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I always view Newport as good for nothing bastard yees!

Agree! they are bastards, Welsh ones at that but they actually went down before us in 1988, so feck you Newport. Fair play to them for bouncing back though, see below :


"1988 finished bottom of the Fourth Division with a mere 25 points, meaning that their 60-season stay in the Football League was over. They failed to finish their first season in the Conference and finally went out of business on 27 February 1989 with debts of £330,000. They were then expelled from the Conference for failing to fulfil their fixtures.

In June 1989 the club was reformed by 400 supporters including David Hando as chairman; later club president. Former manager John Relish was re-appointed team manager and they were elected to the Hellenic League (then four divisions below the Football League). The club's main aim was to regain the Football League status lost in 1988. The club took on the name "Newport A.F.C." and adopted the nickname The Exiles, as a result of having to play home matches for the 1989–90 season at the London Road ground in the north Gloucestershire town of Moreton-in-Marsh, around 80 miles north-east of Newport. Newport Council considered the new company to be a continuation of the old, and refused permission to use Somerton Park on the grounds of unpaid rent".

Not quite that simple though is it - had we stayed up that season, we'd still have been faced with the same issues as last season, just in a higher division - maybe there may have been some more money coming in, but under the circumstances it's difficult to think it would have done more than delayed the inevitable for a season. Meanwhile Newport were a better-run club and especially having already been in the NL they could well have coped better with the drop and still had those cup ties... Yes they've struck lucky in their draws in the FA Cup over the last two seasons, but then again they've still earned it - while we have a shocking cup record over the last few years....

I resented Newport after they (aided and abetted by Notts Co) effectively put us down on that black day back in ‘17 and later stole one of our few quality players in Amond - who will be playing at a much higher level very soon. However, watching the Boro’s abject humiliation at their hands on Tuesday night gladdened my soul and changed my opinion of the Boyos. In an alternate reality that could have easily been Pools but for the equally abject ownership, management and players who all contrived to dump us into this Godawful existence.

On another night it would never have been us, for the reasons you mentioned, our whole history has been one of abject ownership, management and players, save for a couple of periods second part of 1950s and the IOR period. As the Darlo fan alluded to, if it wasn't for IOR we would of been in this godawful existence for around 20 years now. All the other clubs like us went into non league football one by one, but we always managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat from Neil Warnock in 1972 until Ronnie Moore, our luck just simply ran out. It was our turn. What is interesting now is, will we come back like Newport and Donny or will we end up like Workington or Southport.

Hang on a minute Mr Horden.

For most of Pools history, when clubs like us were dropping out of the League, we clung on to our status largely thanks to an enormous amount of hard work from people who were effectively volunteers or worked for low wages. Despite that we had a good side in the '50s, actually got promoted in the late '60s, and then managed it again under Cyril Knowles. All of that was achieved under owners who were never deluded enough to think they could make cash out of Pools (apart from Gary Gibson who at least had a cash generating fantasy that involved building a good team).

We were saved from post-Gibson oblivion by Harold Hornsey who did what we all reckon we'd do if we had millions in the bank and personally rescued the club. I'm not sure how many of us would really do that if we had the money he had.

Only after all of that did IOR step in with what was a very good period of wealthy but sensible ownership. For whatever reasons, maybe it was just a tax fiddle, they basically subsidised us for years and made the club stable and professional.

Seems odd to me that somebody with your politics often ignores the most obvious thing about Pools - surviving for so long at League level was miraculous given a local economy that has been largely knackered since the 60s. Pools were a community club in all but name for most of their history and the blame for our recent decline lies with the criminals who perpetrated them, not the decent people who did their best in difficult circumstances during the decades before even lower division football became a honey pot for chancers.

that is the main point now. toulouse and horden have looked at the same thing differently. for me both are right but its all water under the bridge now and need to start next season to see which way the club will go. after our first two non league seasons it looks more southport than newport.

I was describing Pools history in a nutshell Mr Toulouse, if I had wanted to describe it in full, I would of mentioned the little tit bits you refer to. I have often said on here our claim to fame is the fact we are still in the Football league against all the odds. To lay the blame solely at the door of recent owners just reeks of bad losers. What I find ironic is most of our supporters welcomed them with open arms, as desperate people tend to do. Those like me that are naturally suspicious of knights in shining armour riding in to save us, probably got ridiculed for asking challenging questions of them , as I do now, who's to say Raj Singh won't turn out to be the same?

We started two weeks ago v Braintree, and need to continue tomorrow. The fightback needs to start now, not next season. Its off the field that is more of a concern to me though, and that will eventually flow through to matters on the field.

I'm not too confident like. I think the club is still in a mess/is a mess, and is on the verge of another meltdown.


PS. Just another one of my conspiracy theories.

is it just a theory or just adding two and two together. might be just a thick old sod but cannot get my mind round financial issues in football and yearn for the good old days when fans fell out about who they thought should be in goal etc.

PM.

The club needs to change fast and end this being happy just to survive attitude.
Rewarding management n players last summer with new contracts after the worst season in the clubs history.
Has it worked?
Of course it hasn't its just a repeat of last season.
Like I've said bfor I'm grateful we still got a club but it's time to crack on and raise the ambition and expectation levels.
I'm talking challenging for a play off spot next season not winning the league.
Bin the out of contract players in May or next season will be the same as last 2.
Rockets n Science comes to mind.

Gateshead no money no fans but do OK.
Opinions eh its wot makes the Bunker.

Agree ! My worry is yet again there wont be a massive clear out in the summer.

or a change in how to play the game.

If there's no clear out Horden then the season ticket sales will be down by a good 1000.
Would of thought the club can't afford to get it wrong again especially with the parachute payments running out.
We see what May brings marra

Don't forget a good dose of plain stupidity too. When we publicised the wrongdoings that were going on the only reaction we got was abuse. It was more important to hang onto petty message board rivalries than recognise the wholesale theft that was going on in the face of irrefutable evidence. From the local press to other forms of social media they all ignored the evidence until it was too late and attempted to humiliate the likes of myself and others. 'Back to school' 'keyboard warriors' 'detectives' etc. Even standing by Coxall on that disgracefully staged Q&A's forum. It was the very antithesis of what journalism is supposed to be.

Not sure it was stupidity in all cases because I think some genuine people were just desperate not to face the truth. It was like those situations when everybody knows somebody's partner is shagging elsewhere but they keep believing in the extra night shifts even when there is no extra pay and their boss says there hasn't been any need for nights for two years.

You're right about the irrefutable evidence though, you and the other detectives made it widely available for a long time but some people chose to ignore it and even took the piss. Might have made a big difference if they hadn't had Pools fans sticking up for them although its hard to be certain as lot of damage was already done.

The problem is always at what point are you sure about things? Raj Singh scares the shit out of me because of his record at Darlo. He might be genuine but we know that if the situation requires it he'll administer the death blow to a club. My understanding when he took over was that the alternative was impending doom with the real possibility of no support from the council over the ground to help a phoenix club. I didn't argue against Singh based on accepting information I was given that I took on trust. Might have been very wrong, we'll see.

I still believe that a new club would have been a better option. It would have galvanised support and moved forward debt free. The ground wasn't a problem for a community owned phoenix club based on conversations I had off the record. Remember we still owe Sage all that money and any cup run as per Newport would not help the club long term it would simply be paid to Sage. Newport (new club by the way) will now be secure for about five years.

Aye, it was fairly clear that seemed your agenda from the start. It’s not for me that until it’s a last resort. The fans need to get behind the people who put money in to save the club. Demotion loads of divisions and starting from stratch losing HUFC as it was forever, ‘better???’ Sorry for not agreeing with that prospect....

I was told that being able to use the ground was far from certain. Only thing that made me think Singh was worth trying. I'm still convinced he has a set amount he'll risk in mind and after that, if we haven't got league status and more steady income, he'll go. Makes perfect business sense for him but we'll be in deep shit again. Kg

No need for the pejorative wording, I formed a view based on evidence I had at the time (which was more than most and yes, I had seen the accounts) and that view was that it was the best way to go long term. I have see nothing to change my mind and come next season when the last of the parachute money dries up things could get very touch and go.

Absolutely he has and to be fair to the man he has never pretended otherwise.

I respect and am grateful for everything you did but don’t agree with you on that.

That's fair enough. All any of us have to offer are our honestly held opinions.

Depends on who you had the conversation with.

Decision makers Snowy.

Like in the Jobcentre? I Daniel Blake ?