We can finally look forward because this man will change everything for the good. This club is getting pulled towards that launch pad day by day by all concerned and it will indeed take off this coming season. We have a good Chairman good Manager and good Chief Executive but most of all we have the Hignett effect and that is the real blessing here. We are incredibly fortunate to have him at our club at this vital time in our history and if any of you doubt him just wait a month or two then see how you feel about him.

I sincerely hope that you're right, and tend to think along the same lines, there's a bit of a feel good factor creeping in.

Cue for both of us to now be shot down in flames!

I tend to agree. Scott Loach summed it up on Poolsworld when he said the place felt like a proper football club again.
I am quietly optimistic without expecting too much. Steady progress for me. Anything more will be a bonus.

Usual pre-season talk ....... see what it's like after the first 5 games.

I would be quite happy if we were sitting around 10th/12th in the table come the end of September. Cautious optimism has to be the mood at the moment...

Absolutely, lets hope we can replicate the form we had shown towards the end of last season and with a few more signings hopefully can kick on a bit further.

last sentence sums it up for me. signings certainly look good on paper but so did some of last seasons.

E I E I E I O etc.

If we don,t aim for the top we might as well not bother.

Its all about the results which I'm sure will be a lot better than last season.
Maybe even a play off position with some decent loan signings.

I hope this sentiment turns out to be correct.

Either way I am glad he is back at the club because I thought Pools owed him one really, coz the previous bastard regime practically ruined his career.

Having hignett back and getting rid of harrison, is probobly worth a ten point start on last year.

More like Hignett over Paul Watson, he was head of recruitment don’t forget including the recruiting of the manager. People forget about that knob end and the damage he helped cause, I never will! Harrison was out of his depth but the club was a basket case and most would have struggled in that environment.

Oh yeah forgot about the mystery man behind it all.

Slowly slowly catchy monkey, or something like that

http://www.thenationalleague.org.uk/wha ... ults-51500

I'd just like us not to lose our first match. As the late Neale Cooper said, take care of the small targets and the big ones take care of themselves.
At least twice when we thought we'd piss a league, we were brought down to earth with a bump in the first match.

A good start would be a massive bonus after the last few years of misery but you have to be prepared to give a new manager with a re-shaped squad time. I'd be happy with signs that the team was playing how Hignett wants them to and middle of the table at Christmas. That would put us in a decent position to push on and finish in the play-offs.

Anything better and I'd be genuinely delighted - we shouldn't forget that we're coming back from a near death experience.

Hignett effect? To be fair to Mr. Twilight, he does give some credit to the manager, the chairman and even the chief exec. but where's the evidence that Craig is making the (as yet untested) difference? One thing's for sure, if we start badly it will be the manager's fault! As the saying goes, success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.

Agree with Mr. Mars - being in the right half of the table after a couple of months and looking like we will stay there would be a great start. And if things are still looking healthy on and off the pitch it will be a great team effort - including the two coaches!

I keep saying it but if Bates keeps up his points per game ratio we will finish in the play offs. Which I'd be well happy about.

Keeping above the relegation spots and paying the laundry bills would be an improvement on Harrison's reign!

Pin its our time and Hignett will make sure its a successful season. We have never had a better team of people in charge of our club FACT!

Now its time to take full effect! Well done to every single person at or behind the club.
We have a real club out of nothing.......Lets enjoy what I believe will be a superb season.

Some questions !

1. Do we need a director of football, when we are trying to sort out our finances?

2. If Hignett is that good , why not make him manager

3. If Hignett is that good, why did no other club want him to work for them?

Just saying like.

The difference between the role or director of football and manager is vast, it’s like saying you should make a good media manager chairman. After consideration Hignett might feel his strengths lie in his current role, he certainly recruited well in his last spell until the crooks running the show started to unravel.

Apart from wild guesswork from the bloke at the Mail and others with an agenda against the new regime I have seen no suggestion or evidence that finances are ‘that’ tight, the size of squad and quality of signings certainly doesn’t. What’s been said is the club will be run better and that we actually have a solid business plan going forward. Having someone with Hignetts contacts and eye for a player in charge of recruitment is a huge upgrade on the chancer we had doing it this time last year. It’s a perfect role for someone like Hignett. I think Singh has a point to prove after what happened at Darlo and wants to right a wrong in terms of the perception of his involvement in football one of things he probably thought he thinks he got wrong was trying to run the football side of things.

Bates has definitely said in interviews that additional signings were dependent on freeing up the wage bill by moving on some of the transfer listed players. So far only Harrison has gone, so there can't be much weight to that idea! Maybe it was a bit of kidology all along, maybe Raj Singh has been persuaded that certain signing opportunities were too good to pass up on, either way there's nothing for us fans to complain about.

As for local papers like the Mail, they're still in the business of selling papers/online advertising so basically need a headline a day from Pools. That's why you get the likes of Kennedy desperately spinning over 2 or 3 days bits of new information that the OS dealt with in a couple of paragraphs. It's not peculiar to the Fail's coverage of Hartlepool.