Can IOR take the club any further or do you think it's time for a change.I know IOR have done great things for Hartlepool Utd but personaly i think it's time for them to step aside.You only have to look at the current squad we have a decent first eleven but after that the rest are Sunday morning players.There is lack of investment on the current squad and i see it being a long season unless things change.

The last thing we need is change at the top, for a small club we have something that is priceless and something many other clubs would sacrifice an arm for; stability. Don't underestimate it's value, I reckon it's something we have got to a stage with that we almost take it for granted.

We might not go splashing millions on players but IOR are always trying to take us forward as a club.

First and foremost, IOR have been terrific for Pools overall, funding our debt and allowing us to move on as a club in a way that few could have expected. Harold Hornsey is rightly feted as the saviour of the club, but one of his reasons for selling was that even his wealth was not going to be enough to give us much more than pottering around in Division 3. When so many other clubs have gone from crisis to crisis, the value of IOR to Pools cannot be underestimated.

If IOR do step aside, then what we have to ask is who will we get in charge. The answer is more than likely someone worse, either in terms of available resources or in terms of what they do with the club - though the current ground ownership should mean we don't attract the property speculators such as the guy who took over Wrexham. Don't kid yourself that there are loads of people around who are prepared to do it - in all honesty it would have to be a fan, and it has to be someone worth tens of millions at least if they are to even keep things at their current level. Not many of them about.... Unless someone has a direct line to the Royal Families of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar or the like, who seem to have so much money that even a Prem club is almost an impulse purchase, IOR are about the best we can get and I don't see many alternatives.

That is also unfair. Before IOR these 'Sunday morning players' would have walked into just about every side we've had apart from a couple. When we play well with our best eleven as well it's as good a side to watch as we've ever had.

I understand peoples frustration in the lack of transfer activity but you still have to maintain a modicum of perspective.

It will be a long season, it always is, eight months or there and there about...


Bin IOR, get a madman Like Georgie Reynolds or a silly boy like Gasher Gibson, we'll have fun aplenty

I don't know which sunday morning team you play for, or watch, but they must be of a very high standard. If they are of the same standard as Power, Rowell, Clark then they must be worth watching. In fact I might come and have a look - where do they play?

No, it's not and will never in the foreseeable future be time to invite IOR to move on.

Someone once said, 'no, you can see more of the iceberg than you can't see...' and it was less of a daft statement than yours.

Although your statement will never lead to the plethora of homicide-worthy karaoke performances by fat, drunk lasses as the above did.

Unless someone brings out a song called 'Send The Buggers Back (To Norway).'

I cannot bring myself to call IOR but i have always believed they have no rappour with the fans.

Have you got a nicer ground??

Have you got a better team??

Do you want to talk oil related international finance?

Can you speak Norwegian??

Can you make the board meetings in Stavanger??

Can you name four league teams that DO have a rapport with the fans??

Have you had a decent last ten years??

Well shurrup then......

Put like that your right.

what like the FA reduce the number of weeks we play?? or maybe we can bribe the referee to only paly 75 minutes a match.

Have to disagree with you Kev. IOR are the only sensible option, we all think we need more investment, but the truth is unless someone with money to burn (as someone says some rich Middle east prince) who wants to buy a small club and take it to the premiership, then for me its better the devil you know.

After yesterday though even with a middle east prince we probably have Ronaldo Gerrard Berbatov Terry And anyone else you care to name playing out of position.

Quite possibly not. We'll be stuck in this division till the cows come home.

Remind me where we used to be traditionally stuck...

I can see where you are coming from. However unless there is massive interest from sources which we can only dream about ( ala Man City) then we are where we are. I understand your point about how far the current owners can or are willing to take us. Personally I don't think we are going any further than this division. In fact, if we were to move divisions, we would probably go down.
IOR have stabilised the club and made massive strides forward from where we were but the next step is equally or more as massive. I don't think IOR are able or even willing to pump any more money in than they do currently. Which is your point I think.

I think maybe we should just count our blessings and appreciate what we have with IOR. If they pulled out I can't see there being a massive queue to buy in. Thinking in purely commercial terms - why should they? These people don't invest for the love of the game or the culture - they do it to make more money. If you then take Hartlepool United as a commercial proposition with its crowds of 3,500 or so then its a non-starter.

Thank your lucky stars for IOR...

Hartlepool Utd is a Tax Fiddle for IOR, the only money spent on Hartlepool depends on what taxes IOR have to pay.Alot of the fans are in a comfort zone and scared of change, how much control does Wilson have in picking the team the club is ran from Scotland and a fax machine. You have seen in the last week two Managers walk out on their clubs for the same reasons i see happening at Hartlepool.

isnt our president, peter mandelson, a mate of prince charles? maybe he could put a word in and we can get royalty to step in and take the club forward!!

Have they taken us as far as they can? Yes they probably have, but as i've said many times before, this is where a club of our size belongs, we just aint geared up to play at a higher level....

I sometimes wonder whether the people of Hartlepool actually DESERVE a professional football club. Piss poor attendances and a general apathy towards the club from the majority of townsfolk make me wonder why IOR actually bother

I am extremely grateful for what IOR have done, but it appears that for whatever reason some of the townsfolk/supporters etc are not as grateful as others.
I think Kevin's point about the manager's position is valid, although I don't think Danny will walk. We have heard the chairman say that our squad is good enough and big enough and we are getting the sparseness of the squad noises from the manager.
I think we have got the nucleus of a decent squad but, in my humble opinion, it needs strengthening. I am not in a position to help with that, so I remain in the hands of IOR.
The number of people who are now saying that IOR should do 'a Harold Hornsey' is increasing. However I am one of the group who are scared of going backwards if IOR upped sticks and went.
There is no doubt that IOR have achieved wonders, but the question is being asked as to whether they are looking for further improvement or have we reached our peak? That is a big big question. Who knows what the answer is.

Simple question Kevin, who the hell would want to take over a club that is losing £1 Million a year, and spend even more on 'taking us to the next level'

i'm assuming that you want someone to take over Pools who can get us playing regular Championship football?

if that is the case then unless one of us wins £70 million on the Euro millions, you have no chance of ever seeing it.

our attendances suggest we are a League 2 club, our finances suggest we are struggling massively to compete with most of League 1.

To become a Championship club, we will need someone to throw a minimum of an EXTRA £3 million per YEAR, just to survive.
Or we somehow manage to develop the ground into a big stadium and regularly attract 15,000+ fans each home game.

either way it isn't going to happen.

Attracting 6000 plus home fans to our current home games would be a good start, but how do we do that. The only way at the moment would be to get some really exciting new blood in. I know that costs money, but IOR are losing money week in week out and year in year out. At the moment they are just throwing good money after bad. What if they took a gamble and invested a bit more to generate more interest from the town. It has no guarantees but at least it has a chance of getting a return, whereas the current situation is just wasting money. What if....what if....what if.....
I really can't see that making the ground better or bigger or both is going to get us anywhere unless we attract more fans through the door. What happens on the pitch will dictate that outcome. Even then there are no guarantees. We're between a rock and a hard place. Does the town want a successful football club? Like an earlier poster said.......it doesn't look like it.

I sometimes wonder the same thing - too many 'football fans' in our town are content to say they 'support' one of our bigger neighbours from their armchair in their replica shirts. As someone else has suggested if you look at our attendances they are that of a League Two side. Nobody would be queueing u to invest in Pools if IOR pulled out - fact!

With respect. I dont know why any of you are moaning about attendances on here. Its just stating the obvious. Is it not also the case that saying IOR might as well pull out is a bit silly. We need IOR to invest further not spend our time on here trying to convince them they are wasting their time.

being new to this computer malarky, i dont know the age range of people on here or how long theyve been going to pools, but...im sure theres people on this board who went to the matches in the 70s and 80s when we were properly shite, the ground was a mess, the boardroom was a farce (vince barker selling a player to pay for a new combine harvester anyone), i even remember one match in the early 80s where the team wore three different playing strips in a match cos they didnt have the means for a full kit!!! i cant believe anyone actually wants to criticise ior for the position we find ourselves in, i never thought id ever see a day when we got promoted nevermind established in the division above. whats wrong with showing gratitude

I have to agree with that.

I think that is half the problem mate. Some of us do remember those days and are grateful for the vast improvements. A lot of people have 'come on board' in the last ten years and have only known relative success and want it all the time. The diehards of the years to which you refer probably still go, if they are able. Some of us go further back than that and still go. I think we are just about down to diehard level now. God forbid that our support dwindles further.

IOR have been great for the club, I just wish they would be a bit more open. A fans forum or committee would be the way forward in my opinion.

I'd go along with that..........won't happen like!

ditto

Can I just tell you a little story, well I'm going to anyway so if you don't to hear then, tough

Me and a few mates have season tickets in the Cyril Knowles towards the Town End. Last season we had a decent bar with three or four lager pumps on right behind where we sit.. jackpot! We had a little rota for who went to the bar the every week for the half time pints and always got served straight away and your pint was always waiting for you at half time... again jackpot! This is one the reason's we renewed in the same part of the ground, because we are alcoholics! No seriously it's one of the things you enjoy after a week at work having a pint with your mates at half time. Anyway to our disappointment the bar is shut this season and apart from the main bar at the opposite end of the stand we only have the new small 'Magners Bar' in the corner. This has one lager pump and one beer pump and to serve that side of the Town End and that half of the Cyril Knowles!! It is a right off to try and get served at during half time, you'd have to leave your position after about 40 minutes and ultimately you go to watch the match. Anyway we decided to E Mail the club after the West Brom game after the speaking the ladies behind the bar and finding that is was to be like this all season, we forgot of course!

A week or so later one of my mates was passing the ground and just happened to spot Mr Hodcroft putting some stuff in his car so he decided to ask him about the situation with this bar. He couldn't have been more helpful. He took him inside see Russ Green and also he couldn't have been more helpful. He explained that the bar hadn't been cost efficient and the by the figures given it was only us keeping it open last year Mr Hodcroft asked Russ if anything could be done about the the new bar and he said that they will endevour to have more lager pumps in for the next league game.

On a one to one basis they were both superb and I'd like to remind everyone that we've only heard one side of the story with this current press situation. Maybe it would be nice if they were a bit more open on these matters but I'm prepared to trust there judgment after nearly 11 years backing Hartlepool United.

Nice little anecdote that PJ - I always knew they were human really.

Now then boys!!! Who is gloomy now ? A lot of what is been said now I was saying years ago.
Looking at things logically pools are punching above their weight in div 1 and really taking into account the crowds , potential, economics etc we should be in div2. However football is not as straight forward as that and clubs like Scunthorpe , Crewe etc have bucked the trend in the past and played championship football so why cant we?.

We are a small club and for IOR to splash the cash now could see us going out of business or starting life in div2 minus 30points. The thing is if we finish mid table in div 1 season after season crowds will drop by 2 or 3 hundred every season, then the cloth will have to be cut and we will end up going down whichever way you look at it.

IOR should of been more ambitous around 2004 time when interest was at an all time high, 5000 plus crowds with the potential to get up to around 7000 . Pools never kicked on at this time , just been content to get into the play offs instead of going for the title and automatic promotion.

Some people may be happy to watch a club going through the motions in div 1 , others will stay away and things will only get worse. Basically we might as well get relegated now , at least then the club would be in a reasonably strong position and then maybe come back stronger after a year or two and win our first title. If we stay in div 1 for a couple of more seasons the club will go down with a reduced fan base and considerably weaker.

The lesson to be learned is that a club the size of pools can never stand still, they have always got to be reaching for the stars . The only way we will ever achieve championship football is to win div 2 title and get promoted from div1 the following season. The momentum has got to carry us through, we are too small to have 5 or 6year plans.

So we can't stand still?

Lets go backwards instead.

Have to agree with that bit

ronaldo you are true visionary

I think we couldn't have been much more ambitious around that period, especially after Cardiff we signed four players who were all at the time on paper 'Championship players' add to that to Tommy Butler this was already adding to our best ever side. We just had the wrong man in charge, imagine Tony Mowbray had took the job which he apparently very nearly did? We didn't kick on because we got relegated!! The ambition was automatic promotion at the start of that season, we were one the pre season favourites.

Cant disagree there PJ, them players looked good on paper and Butler is still the business, why they underperformed we will never know. In defence of my argument though these players did not cost anything , I assume they came because of a decent wage offered. The really good players cost money, there were question marks over whether these players could do it on a regular basis before they came, we found out the hard way.

At the end of the day if they had been good they wouldnt of come to Hartlepool in the first place.

What a load of fcuking A1 Gord you talk......


Reach for the stars, like who

Tell me a team of our stature who have 'reached for them there stars'....... and not gone into admin

agree with talbot.

ronaldo, much as i respect your right to an opinion, i have the right to tell you its total pompous bollox

No matter what aido says i disagree.

but you want me to be your dad

get to bed spotty

Talbot Avenger! Er!! Scunthorpe, Cambridge, Colchester like.

Part of the problem with pools is that the majority of its fanbase are pathetic small time charlies who are quite happy just to have a league club and nothing else.

Of course we are 'small time Charlie’s', after all who wouldn't want to swap places with Colchester right now, or come to think of it, Cambridge

Remind me do, which league are the 'Bridge in now

Still I'd happily swap two years in the old division two for non-league football

I think IOR did believe they were cracking on after the play-off final.
They provided the most support they've ever done on incoming transfers.
The problem is they chose a plank to implement the idea.

Sure enough an extra Lager pump was on the Magners Bar last night

Shame you didn't ask for a nosh!