Imagine a wish list scenario where you were offered the chance for your team to win the league by winning every match one nil and playing worst football ever seen on a football pitch, so dire it was embarassing, but you win the league with maximum points..... would you take it?
The question really is are you after success regardless of how it’s obtained....?

Thats got me thinking after first saying i,d jump at it. Remember coming out of the vic when pools have been as dreadful as the opposition and not being happy with the win. Other occasions they have been beaten by the better team on the day but feel less annoyed by the result. Even this season the draw at oldham was far worse a performance than defeats at barrow and tranmere. Think all fans want a succesful side to follow, but if you want instant success and nothing else you,d swerve pools in the first place. Just watching positive football with a mixture of styles and players will do me i think and any success is a bonus. This season could have been better but at the end of the day i,d have settled for how the season has panned out.

The problem is that the scenario presented is not a sustainable one, because after one season of it in league two we would be in league one. Then what????
Another two seasons of it and we're in the premiership.
Hartlepool United, as is, couldn't maintain a championship side, never mind a prem one.
I think it is a perfect scenario for getting out of the national league and I'm sure everyone would be grateful for it.
After that I'm not so sure.
Maintaining league one status, with decent cup runs and maybe flirting with the championship now and again is probably our zenith.
Unless of course a Poolie billionaire emerges on to the scene.
I think Sunderland and Sheff Wed fans would take it to get back to the prem.

Sounds like you're describing George Graham's Gunners side there, but they were brutally efficient at being 'boring, boring Arsenal' and winning 1-0 rather than dire.

The question is a bit too much of a hypothetical because a team has got to be good at something to win consistently. Would I be happy if Spike produced a side that emulated George Graham's approach and walked League 2 with a lot of 1-0s? Hell yes!

It is an hypothetical scenario taken to extremes, but asks would YOU be happy to achieve your goal that way....it ain’t gonna happen, it simply means do you value success over quality of football. A dilemma too far, like the bridge.

as long as we play "positive football"....."success is a bonus"....errr...wtf....surely you've got it back to front yet again there mate...

Never said any such thing, just posing a dilemma, not a formula for a successful team, no one’s cracked that one.

I would be happy to use it in one circumstance....getting back into the EFL from oblivion.

Truthfully speaking - it would have to come with all the benefits of such a feat to sustain the club along the way too. Ideal bombing through the leagues but if we say lived week to week and struggled in other ways - it would be not viable in any instance - think of such teams that have gone out of existence yet been highly successful at the same time doing such things. Id like Pools to get as high as the Championship being absolutely realistic in terms of what type of club we are. To be there for a few seasons and earn some decent cash with really good players would be a joy to watch and be part of. At the minute Pools have blown everyones expectations for first season back in the league right out the water - long may that theme continue - so who knows 5 years time we could just well be an established L1 side again pushing for Promotion more often than not !

No.

Football's beauty is that it's unpredictable. Football's excitement lies in the fact that's it's unpredictable. You can lose a game by playing brilliantly, conversely you can win a game by getting a dodgy penalty, the only shot on target you've had in 90 minutes.

Take away unpredictability and you've lost everything, you might as well sit in a room and listen to The Lighthouse Family. Ugh.

Yup, that’s my opinion too

Personally I want to see good football whenever I watch a football match with the one exception of Pools playing. The result then is all important however achieved!

So you’d condone ‘professionalism’, dirty tricks, cynical thuggery and intimidation on the pitch.....?

would condone some of it if it was in the refs interpritation of the laws of the game. how many offences to you see players get away with in games that refs seem to ignore for both sides. when pools cross the line it usually ends up with cards of different colours where our opponents seem more street wise in their actions. a lot depends on what fans think proper football is. our first goal on tuesday shows that one good pass is far better than 20 short tippy tappy ones where it breaks down in the end. then there is this playing out from the back. great if it was that but usually it consists of numerour sideways/ backwards passes till someone hoofs it upfield in the end. the keeper could have done the same minutes earlier.

It's the ref's job to condone or penalise activity on the pitch, not spectators/fans.
For me, Pools' result is all important.

Totally agree accy, most playing out from the back is a waste of time and fraught wiith danger in league 2; the players are simply not skilled enough.

wouldnt mind one bit if pools became the crazy gang mark 2 .....and replicated their success.......and tbh personally would welcome a vinnie jones type player to our central midfield or central defence at the moment....if it happened no doubt the "positive football" purists on here would recoil in horror and stop going to games at the vic in protest...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... -Gang.html


sterrys goal the other night...from 0.48....route one at its best....


https://www.skysports.com/watch/video/s ... -mansfield

...’the positive football purists on here’ are a creation of your own vivid imagination, every team needs a couple of enforcers, but anyone who even jokingly advocates the Wimbledon ‘Crazy Gang’ as a template for their team and is more ‘impressed’ by their cynical knockabout comedy mockery of football than the genuine article, probably finds the clowns in the circus a bit high brow.

Karanka tryed to do that at Boro a few years back.

Id take it at Pools next season.
UTP.

snowy......"’the positive football purists on here’ are a creation of your own vivid imagination"....read the thread....

"Just watching positive football with a mixture of styles and players will do me i think and any success is a bonus."

....my vivid imagination ?....nah....mr accringtons opinion...and hate to quote catweazle gary... but football is a simple game.....not really for "high brow" intellectuals like yourself....

agree with you, but i do not know where my vivid imagination comes into it.

Which is what I’ve been saying all along. I think you’ve confused the original concept of the post with reality, which it ain’t.

accrington..have edited my post above to assist you with your query about the vivid imagination jibe...

In Accrington’s case I was referring to Angie Dickinson’s ‘stern’ regions