Season over and we missed out on the play offs by 8 points.
Could / should we have closed that gap?
Sarlls ridiculous hoofball with Mani on his own up top mainly with his back to goal tactics cost us. As did the disciplinary record, Waterfall alone probably cost us 6 points?
Lennie's sending a team out against the top sides accepting and expecting nothing from the game (those games won't define the season) probably cost us a couple of points. His dull defensive tactics probably a couple too.
All 3 managers this season playing to defend a single goal lead must have cost us a handful or more points.
Raj's announcements on the future of the club hardly helped and must have affected the players and staff.
A season of huge under-achievement without doubt - 68 points making the play offs, probably not get a better chance.

Totally agree about the shit tactics from all 3 Managers obsession of trying to defend 1 goal leads.

68 pts to get into the play-offs is all the evidence I need that this division 5 has been the worst standard ever.
Maybe shitting on KP in the end caused our failure.
For me this stupid new boardroom is the reason.

i,d guess other teams have also dropped points they should have taken during the season. pools are not unique in any way.

The same KP that took over at Fylde, who finished 5 points behind us last year, and got them relegated? Maybe things could have been worse, who knows.

thank goodness he took fylde down as it would have been mayhem on here if they did a great escape to end lower mid table under him.

I think Pools might be unique for the number of stupid points lost in a season, some under Lennie not even competed for!

those who know the stats tell us how many points we have dropped in the last 10 minutes of games and how many we picked up in that period when we were behind. i guess the first will easily outnumber the second.

Fylde were already in the bottom 4 when KP took over and under the bloke who replaced him they lost 7 of their last 8 games. For whatever reason that club has been a basket case this season.

after going to fylde once its hard to imagine if they were an owners toy they got where they actually got. they would have a bigger local fanbase if they moved the club to horden and call there club horden coasters.

8 points or 800 points, it makes no difference, we failed.
No ifs, no buts…it’s just another sorry chapter for the record books..we failed because we weren’t good enough….again.

Of course we failed but there's no harm in thinking about why, what went wrong, etc.
Nothing more or less than talking points and a chance to put our opinions on why we failed.
I'd be surprised if any of the posters on here would argue that we shot ourselves in both feet this inglorious season.

Keeping Fergy n Fevs anutha reason to failure.

Surely to God they are history.

I've put together a spreadsheet that shows our "shortcomings" if anyone's interested

Fergy improved with Cleary in front of him, but Fev is becoming a modern day Richie Humphries with games just passing him by. Both stayed 2 or 3 seasons too many and effectively stifled the team imo.
Miley has to be the building block for our midfield next season, tackles, good passer, forward thinking, rarely gives the ball away, great engine, everything Fev isn't nowadays.
Fev was having a real rant at everyone around him at one point yesterday, Parkes wasn't having it and intervened which quickly shut him up.

According to BBC radio Tees yesterday we have had 12 games were from a winning position we have allowed equalisers in the last five minutes or in time added on thus dropping 24 points.

stupoolie, many thanks for that.

That is almost unreal.
If we only fcuked up 7 games then we would have been in the playoffs.
All Shudda Wudda Cudda of course.

But that can't be all bad luck more down to bad tactics.

Don't no for Deffo but it could of been the least ammount of wins in a season of our national league history by more than 1 goal.

I'm guessing about 3/4 maximus

Statto alert.

This is the data on goals scored and conceded in what part of the game. We’ve conceded 17 in the final 15 minutes of matches, but we’ve scored almost the same amount, 16.

When you look at Barnet, and especially York, their final 15 mins is by far their most productive of the match, but their number of goals conceded doesnt increase. Is it fitness? Concentration?

Another stats post to come

This one is on leads taken and equalisers conceded.

We’ve taken the lead 32 times this season, which is the 4th best in the league, but have conceded equalisers 18 of those times which is the 2nd worst in the league, meaning we lose a lead 56.3% of the time.

Only Ebbsfleet and D&R have lost a greater percentage of leads than us.

Again, looking at York and Barnet - they lost their leads 22.5% and 19.4% of the time. An absolutely massive difference.

Wonder who you'll find to moan about when Nicky finally calls it a day? Or maybe we'll become world beaters overnight

For the record:
- He passed the ball as well as anybody yesteday and better than most - that's why he keeps getting picked How many managers now is it who haven't agreed with your low opinion of this one player?
- He was right to have a pop. The team's 2nd half performance was shite.

He was anonymous for most of the game yesterday, again. It's football and it's opinions, I don't rate him you do, fair do's. Stephenson was terrible as well yesterday, everything he went near the ball we ended up worse off.
Fev had no right to be having a pop at anyone imo and I'm pretty sure Parkes put him right on that score too.
How many managers have seen success building a team around him? How many other clubs have offered him contracts whenever his deal with us was up? He was brought back off the scrapheap in desperation and it shows.

I thought he was ok yesterday, he was involved when we were playing well, he’s helped by the fact that Cleary wants the ball and knows to move into space to receive it. He also recycled the ball well, when we had an attack and FGR tried to clear it, he often read the game to intercept it and put us back in the attack.

He’s looked off the pace sometimes this season, I don’t think that yesterday was one of them, but none of the 3 midfielders yesterday offer the creativity that we need to unlock defences. I can see Miley and Sheron forming a good partnership, but need someone in front of them who can get forward and create. Only Mancini offers that at the club at the moment, but we need it on a regular basis.

18 draws, 11 at home is shocking
Glad to see Graham Lee doing well at Spennymoor
Thought it was a bad call and very bad timing when he got the push, downhill ever since

We weren’t doing too well when he left I recall.

Spikes league record was indeed dismal. Phillips had the best win ratio of every manager since DC and almost matched DC. All water under the bridge now.

Add in MannyDs lots of missed sitters then we would of comfortably hit the top 7.

He'd kept us a league club with players that weren't his. Sounds OK to me.

I love irony.

And to me, a thread full of spreadsheets to explain why a football club ran by spreadsheets didn't make the playoffs is the most delicious irony of 2025 so far.

Thank you for that gentlemen, a most excellent birthday present for me.

Watch his state of play you tube video and he did the job asked of him.
Cup runs n stay up to get a competitive summer budget.
Yes we tailed of after February.
Maybe the players who had a good idea they were getting replaced went into semi strike mode to save there own skin.

It's happened before.

Not an easy job managing Pools under Sing.
The x Darlo managers will also back that up.

We are were we are.
It is what it is.

Anutha day of stalemate I expect today regarding getting better ownership.

Don't forget to water your gardens

17th finish in league 2 was a disaster wasn,t it. those moaning about that might have a very long wait for that to be bettered. it was something to build on but all we got was the foundations destroyed.

If we had managed to take 4 points from each of the bottom 5 clubs the extra 9 points would have given us a playoff spot. Teams are at the bottom of the league because most teams have taken lots of points from them. Why not Pools?

The way Pools wasted almost an entire close season before giving the job to a bloke with no clue about managing in English football is the moment when Raj lost the fans. That stupid prat Lee Rust deserves the freedom of Crawley for his contribution to Pools' EFL demise.

Lee had done enough with the cup runs to get a second season in charge. It might not have worked out (no guarantees in football) but it couldn't have been worse than what actually transpired.

So why did our form go through the floor, check the results.
They were Challinor’s signings he inherited.
The very least I expect of any manager or owner would be to keep us in the league, that is no recommendation.

they went through the floor after the rotherham defeat because the club had achieved what it set out to achieve a second season in league 2 after good runs in ko tournaments. not saying that attitude is correct but its hardly unique in football.

over the 90 odd minutes games were played we hardly played more than a couple of teams off the park during the season. some of our other victories were not memorable either and just about managed to get over the line and did our best to keep fans bighting what was left of there nails doing so.

Pools have been well short of play-off standard this season, as shown by the results against Barnet, York, FGR and even Rochdale.

Put it another way, how many of this squad stand comparison with Challinor's promotion-winning squad? Cleary, Miley, Mani D and Joe Grey is my list. Ferguson and Featherstone aren't the players they were 4 years ago and none of the others are good enough.

Parkes

He's decent, but not as good as Gary Liddle was in 2020/21. Plus we had pace at the back then from Ryan Johnson and Timi Odusina.