also sad to see how few people stayed behind after the game for the " lap of honour "

yeah, i suspect he has played his last game for us. very very sad.

bit of a letdown all round, i thought he was very poor today and he could easily have been subbed with 20 minutes to go.

Chip I have to thoroughly agree. What started as, and should have been, an emotional day, really did turn to shiit by the end.

I trust Joel didnt complete "his unfinished business", that he had talked about. What the hell was up with him?

It was a chance to say goodbye to a true Pools legend. I don't see why that is funny. Trust Grave and Tree to see the wrong side. The proper fans stayed back.

It was a chance to say goodbye to a true Pools legend. I don't see why that is funny. Trust Grave and Tree to see the wrong side. The proper fans stayed back.

I've got a feeling Porter will make himself fit for the Bristol Rovers game, so we can secure safety next season.

How the fook can he 'make himself fit' you daft of the daftest cn.uts?

And how come we didn't secure safety yesterday?

At home?

I'll tell you this, Pools WILL do their UTMOST next week to go down, because quite frankly they are fooking useless

That might make me a disloyal bounder, who DID stay to watch the 'lap of honour', which like 90% of matches this season, the players didn't seem particularly interested in


That is all

To use a cricket analogy, it's about 5pm on the 4th day of a 4 day Test and our last batsmen need to bat the evening out to draw the Test Series.

that deserves a picture of an aeroplane!!!!

as for comments about us being shyte at the vic all season ????? we were top scorers again at home and served up some cracking entertainment. jesus wept could you imagine 10 years ago that folk would be twisting like a pack of bairns about us being 18th in division 3 and losing 1-0 to leeds ?

To use a cricket analogy, it's about 5pm on the 4th day of a 4 day Test and our last batsmen need to bat the evening out to draw the Test Series.

so we were shyte when we beat clochester 4-2 and huddersfield 5-3 ? and shyte at yeovil last week ? shyte when we beat peterborough at their place ? shyte when we drew 2-2 with leicester who pissed the league ? were we shyte when we went and won at carlisle or walsall after being 2 down ? were we shyte when putting 4 past cheltenham or 3 past premiership west brom ? we must have been shyte when dumping stoke out of the f.a. cup because they are also a premiership side ?

what a cracking post talbot. we truly have been shyte all season. thanks so much for making me realise i was wrong. indeed on gates of 3,500 we should be beating every single side in europe.

gonk.

as for the likes of grave and tree... why do you actually bother going to games ?

you clearly hate everything about the club. perhaps you would prefer to go back to the days when we were bottom of the 4th division ? that you couldnt be arsed to hang around for 5 minutes after the game yesterday to give joel and others a bit of a send off, speaks volumes for you both as "fans" and as people.

so we were shyte when we beat clochester 4-2 and huddersfield 5-3 ? and shyte at yeovil last week ? shyte when we beat peterborough at their place ? shyte when we drew 2-2 with leicester who pissed the league ? were we shyte when we went and won at carlisle or walsall after being 2 down ? were we shyte when putting 4 past cheltenham or 3 past premiership west brom ? we must have been shyte when dumping stoke out of the f.a. cup because they are also a premiership side ?

what a cracking post talbot. we truly have been shyte all season. thanks so much for making me realise i was wrong. indeed on gates of 3,500 we should be beating every single side in europe.

gonk.

on my living room wall ive got an autographed and framed photo of the 1998/1999 squad. thats 10 years ago for the thick peasants on this board .

the top row of players includes paul moss, mickey dunwell, glen downey, denny ingram, chris macdonald, j d briggs and craig lake.

the middle row includes nicky evans, mark nash, steven hutt, darren timmons, and martin pemberton.

the bottom row includes stuart brightwell, stuart irvine, gus di lella, ian clark and craig midgely.

it wasnt actually the worst pools side ive ever seen, but there was absolutely no indication of what was to come in the next 9 years.

prior to that point pools had been in the lowest division of english football for almost its entire existence, and nearly always in the bottom half of the lowest division.

we were shiit, a laughing stock, and almost permanently on the brink of going bust.

if someone had told me then that 10 years down the line folk would be kicking off because we couldnt beat leeds united at home id have assumed they were bonkers.

what do folk realistically expect from a club that pulls in attendances of 3,500 ? do they seriously expect them to compete with the likes of leeds united who made nearly 3 million quid profit last year, and who have a huge and expensively assembled squad of players, playing in front of 20 odd thousand at home ?

we beat 2 premier league teams and survived for another season in league one, serving up some decent games along the way, as well as some duffers granted.

okay it wasnt as good as we expected, but did any of the deluded, moaning, tramps on this board genuinely think we were going to finish in the top 6 ?

as for those suggesting ior/hodcroft walk away, who do you think will replace them ?

look at darlo ffs, 2 administartions and on the brink of going out of existence.

i stayed to applaud the pools players yesterday, because while some of them may not be world beaters, and some of them are little better than non league standard,and some of them have made a series of stupid bloody mistakes repeatedly throughout the season, at the end of the day they are still MY FOOKING TEAM.

those beggar tramps and peasants who only want to support them when they are doing well, or who secretly hope that they get beat every game so they can shoot their sad inadequate mouths off on here really should go and support liverpool or man utd.

in fact they probably do.

I tell you what, we improved 110% when he came on on Saturday. I would seriously give him the first half-dozen games in his proper position.

If he can't do it, drop him to sub but I don't think he'd let us down and we'd need SOME experience in there.

I agree.

Ben Clark great centrehalf, rubbish midfielder, getting his confidence destroyed.

Ritchie Humphreys great midfielder, rubbish left back, getting his confidence destroyed.

Gary Liddle, decent midfielder, utterly shiit defender getting his confidence destroyed.

I see a pattern emerging here.

ALB, and Jan Budtz, shiit keepers...........errrrrrr................,

What's your opinion on the players TPP? Do you think individuals have let the Management/Fans down? Which ones?

with respect, the defenders we have should be good enough, whereas the strikers we had at the time definately were not. Turner made several changes to the defense which didnt work. His one big mistake was leaving lee-barrett in goal. Nobody knows what would have happened had wilson still been in charge so there is no point is assuming. The only way turner can be judged properly is to let him put his own squad together and see where we are after 15 games. However i think hodcroft will appoint a new manager who is not currently connected to the club.

I just don't buy any of that.

The club didn't need 5 strikers in January, we were scoring goals and although I agree the area needed strengthening did we need 5 fcking forwards??!! Never. It was a scandalous bit of management.

I remember when I got the text that Lewis Guy had signed. I finally thought it was going to say he had bought a defender. I almost launched my phone at the cat when it said it was Lewis Guy. Turner himself even said 'if we score goals you're always going to win games'. This has proved to be factually incorrect.

'the defenders we have should be good enough' - despite proving for the first few months of the season that they were far from good enough?

rubbish. Turner signed two quality strikers and a young one. He brought guy in to play on the wing due to injuries. One striker then got suspended and the other got a bad injury so he brought in parker. All the while porter was carrying several niggling injuries. He brought in 4 strikers and a winger(that just happens to be able to play up front). And only brought that many in because two of them were injured/suspended. But dont let facts get in the way of a good rant.

i agree about building from the back. However when you look at the two centre backs, they both should be good enough to play at this level easily. Turner obviously thought that with a bit of coaching that would be enough to cut out the mistakes, it hasnt. However there was a serious lack of quality up front which he resolved but was unlucky with injuries. He changed 3 of the back 5 and it still didnt work. our centrebacks technically speaking are easily good enough for this level, but for whatever reason they have made too many mistakes. Whos to say if he had brought a defender in that the new defender wouldnt have made loads of mistakes too? I have written this season off as experience and now expect several signings which should put right what went wrong.

'our centrebacks technically speaking are easily good enough for this level'

Techinically speaking they aren't good enough seeing as they make up the central defence of the 4th worst defence in League 1. Collins has been rubbish all season and Nelse performs well once in every five games. It's been happening since day 1 when we butchered Colchester to bits we still needed 3 goals to win the game. Who was the central defensive partnership that day? Shock horror it was Collins and Nelse. If they're easily 'good enough' for this level they wouldn't be make such shoddy errors on a weekly basis, it's not one or two errors over a season we talking about dozens. You only make these mistakes if you're not good enough.

You say we had a 'serious lack of quality upfront' but our defenders are 'easily good enough for this level'. WTF? The League table at the turn of the year tells a far different story to that.

'Whos to say if he had brought a defender in that the new defender wouldnt have made loads of mistakes too?'

A very weak point made with little substance. If you're strengthening an area then it would essentially mean that these mistakes are cut out.

so what your saying is that turner should have brought in a defender who could guarantee that he wouldnt make a mistake? Impossible

so what your saying is that turner should have brought in a defender who could guarantee that he wouldnt make a mistake? Impossible

I think it's too simplistic to say that our problems this season have been exclusively defensive ones. That would be true if you were only talking about games at the Vic. 40 goals conceded at home is suicidal, and would surely have relegated us but for the superb efforts of the forwards.

Our defensive record away from home is better than that of Hereford, Cheltenham, Crewe, Carlisle, Yeovil, Oldham, Huddersfield, Southend and Scunthorpe. We only conceded three less than Peterborough. So you could equally argue that our defence would have kept us well out of trouble away from home had it not been for the pitiful efforts of the forwards, who scored less than all teams bar Hereford and Yeovil.

These are the same players at both ends of the pitch. The defence is capable of being reasonably tight; the attack is capable of scoring tons of goals. Suggests to me that there's something wrong with the balance we have struck between attack and defence, home and away.

and i personally think that given a chance to make his own signings we will have a much better season next year.