Is it an insult ? or a fact? are you involved with the club in some capacity? come on spill the beans. My predictions may seem bizarre at the moment, with us 7th in the table and only lost 2 games league and cup. Anyone can look at a league table and say for example Southamption are doing well, and Fulham are dogshit, but it takes a greater skill to pre-empt what the table will look like in a months time. What I doing is saving you the bother of saying the team isnt good enough in December, by telling you it isnt good enough now. Like I said , come back on December 6th and discuss it, lets see who got it right. Though hold on there, I dont think we have had your prediction yet , lets have it then , instead of blindly supporting the club and defending the indefensible , its as though the club has told you to come on here, and diffuse any dissent by constantly trying to ridicule my assessments of the situation , hence I called you club lackey.

We're all concerned about the lack of goals - Dave Challinor more than anybody I'm sure. From the look of things the nearest thing to a natural finisher among the forwards is a 17 year old lad. In my book there's a world of difference between expressing concern about that, as you and Mr. Derwent have just done, and writing off your own team's chances of success for years to come. That's a sight more extreme than 'showing concern' wouldn't you say?

It really doesn't bother me, everyone is entitled to an opinion, you may not agree with what they have to say but just accept it and put your opinion across. Like I've said many times before opposing views creates debate. What Mr.Horden and others like him who've been attending Pools games for many decades now is an uncanny knack of seeing where a teams weaknesses lie, also how future situations can unfold, and unfortunately we have a few issues atm. If flagging that up somehow upsets the opposing view contingent well so be it, it's all about opinions.

Well why dont you tell DC to start Grey then, like I did when I spoke with him in June, and have on here since the start of the season. This is the first time I have heard you say this, yet again having a dig at me via another posting, rather than quote me directly. Yes I wrote the teams chances off 10 years ago, said they were heading for the non league, and I then said we would be here for sometime, apologies for been proved correct

Btw don't assume that our present form is somehow pleasing to me, I'm certainly not happy that we seem to be losing our way atm. I would like nothing more than to see us back at the top of the table, and playing consistently well, with a prolific attack and an impregnable defence.
Any one who thinks Horden and myself are revelling in our current predicament could not be further from the truth. We desperately want us to do well, and it will frustrate me greatly should we let this good start to the season just fritter away over the coming months.

I've been ridiculing some of your more extreme comments ever since you joined the Bunker. As I've mentioned once before, I'm the poster formerly known as Malcolm Dawes Knew My Father - joined in 2011, gave it up for a while at the end of last year when the board was being torn apart by political arguments. It takes a truly massive, Donald Trump sized ego to imagine that the club would encourage somebody to come on here just to spoil your fun!

I said when the season started that a play off place was a realistic target and stand by that - that's based on what Dave Challinor has done since he came here and his previous record as a manager. So no, I'm not prepared to write Pools' chances off on the basis of one heavy defeat, in fact I think that's really daft. And your prediction that Darlo and South Shields both have better chances of getting to the EFL than Pools ("I would yourselves and certainly S Shields ahead of us, as regards getting back into the FL") is even more daft -in fact, I predict that will not happen. Happy now?

I can't remember you mentioning your former name on here, why change ?.

I thought you might be a blast from the past, an adversary most likely. I haven't got an ego at all, far from it, just a defence mechanism I have had to develop to defend myself from people like yourself on here over the years, who get pissed off at my constantly being proved correct whilst the majority spout the same old delusional bullshit season after season , then ending up agreeing with me, though never admitting to it , yeah I can see how that might be perceived as having an ego, but, believe me I haven't . I would've done a lot better in life had I had one.

For the record, I haven't written Challinor's side off, I just think it may take 3 or 4 more seasons to get out of this league , though in those 3 or 4 seasons they may get into the the play offs etc. Of course, that's assuming we have a club in the first place , and I truly believe we will go into administration or whatever in those 3 or 4 years. I am a big fan of the manager, though I am starting to have doubts lately. The core of a decent side is there, but we are weak in the key positions and of course the inability to convert chances is a major problem. I predicted a 7th-10th place finish; I haven't changed my mind.

As for South Shields , you may think its daft, I think you dismissing them is daft. You would've said the same about FGR and Harrogate , I didn't , lets just wait and see on that one.

It would get great to see other local sides like Shields, Darlington or Spennymoor in our league again. We also had York scarborough and Gateshead. 12 derbies would be good all round.
Is there anyone else emerging?

Morpeth and maybe Marske

You've just got to look at how many upsets are on the cards this afternoon in the Cup to realise that on the day there isnt a massive difference between clubs at level 3 to 6.
Torquay 4-3 up against Crawley, Carlisle losing at Hayes n Yeading, Chorley leading Wigan 3-2, Barnet beat Burton, Eastleigh holding MK Dons.

And Solihull won at Scunny too.

Be over the moon if we finish 7th. ( in a crap non League Division.)
How my ambitions have dropped.
Must of become immuned to failure with that crazy bit of hope that most of the time shits on us poolies big style.
UTP.

I think we will finish 5th.............any advances on this?

Premier League had 6 difrent leaders this season.
Everton
Liverpool
Southampton
Tottenham
Villa
Leicester.
Some of them daft £2 bets are tempting.
Obviously easy saying after

Shields v Pools at Wembley, play off final , 2023/24 season

More and more smaller well run non league teams making it to the FL, whilst bigger traditional clubs start to fill up the NL , will mean as long as we continue to be badly run, it will be harder season on season to get out of the NL , this is the worry.

all clubs relegated from the league have one thing in common, they are riddled with debt with wages to poor players and dwindling support over a few seasons. those so called well run clubs have had benefactors and have come up from leagues who pay players next to nowt/ its actually easier for them to succeed than for clubs like pools. until pools get an owner like the guy at stockport then seeing a league game at the vic is hardly going to be a possibility.

That is largely true Accy, and largely obvious, the fact they have lost their league status generally goes hand in hand with financial woes. It is strange however that even allowing for this, some clubs can still manage to claw their way back into the FL, such as Cheltenham, Orient and Macclesfield in recent years. Of course on the other side some have went totally tits up and vanished and had to start again, such as Darlo and Bury. It does appear though taking over a blank canvas of a club seems to be more attractive proposition than a traditional club in decline , run and supported by people with entrenched views. To add to our woes, the money as always is predominately in the South , unfortunately for us many of the clubs with money behind them are in the NL. Money or not, a club still has to be run properly, I doubt the guy at Stockport is throwing money around like confetti , he just has the sense to know, you get what you pay for, such as signing John Rooney.

[quote="horden"][


. It does appear though taking over a blank canvas of a club seems to be more attractive proposition than a traditional club in decline ,
to be honest if i did come into loads of money i,m not sure if i would become the pools saviour even with unlimited funds available. too many pools fans would want instant success and you,d never get the full fan base behind your efforts. no one likes being knocked all the time and i might prefer another club where your efforts might be appreciated more.

[quote="horden"][


. It does appear though taking over a blank canvas of a club seems to be more attractive proposition than a traditional club in decline ,
to be honest if i did come into loads of money i,m not sure if i would become the pools saviour even with unlimited funds available. too many pools fans would want instant success and you,d never get the full fan base behind your efforts. no one likes being knocked all the time and i might prefer another club where your efforts might be appreciated more.

I think anyone with money or coming into money, wanting to buy a football club , would if they had anything about them, start perusing their intended targets message boards and forums. Any prospective owner looking at our boards would come to the conclusion the club was a basket case , with a support base of nut jobs, ground down to the point of madness due to years of constant failure , and would leave well alone

thing is its not just pools its all the other ex league clubs at our level and below who have had no success in the recent past. add that to league clubs like mansfield, exeter, northamton , walsall and rochdale. i,d rather cut my legs off at the knees with a pen knife than support rochdale whose fans make pools look like happy clappers and thats when they are winning. we might be mad but there are those equally mad and deluded.

I will give you Rochdale ( possibly the only club with a history as bad as ours , though I think the won a title in 1930 or so ) but no one else, the others have all achieved a little something at sometime or another , giving them something to hang onto when the chips are down.

You make it sound all doom and gloom (don’t you ever) but in my 70 odd years I have enjoyed some good spells without us winning much. In the fifties we saw terrific cup ties against the then league champions Chelsea, the best game ever for me against the busby babes, Stoke, Notts Forest. We have also had two promotions with a great spell under IOR topped with our visit to Cardiff. Of course there has been some rubbish inter spread and I would have liked us to win something but we are still going and getting a decent support at our level. To be honest we have survived by the skin of our teeth and I’m not that optimistic we will get back to league football unless a real sugar daddy comes along but with 3000 plus others I’ll keep going.

It is all doom and gloom you eejit . We have existed for 112 years and won diddly squat. Yes those games you mention may have been good, but did we win them? of course we didnt. We have had 4 promotions in 112 years , but still haven't won a title, got past the 4th round of a cup, played at Wembley or inflicted a giant killing away from home, and now probably never will. Its the worst record of any club thats been in the FL for as long as we have.

Always look on the bright side of life

I fully respect your views but you just seem to be happy pouring out doom and gloom what a life you must have. I can just imagine going out with you for a night out, moan,moan, moan whether it’s football or politics. I’m not daft and what you say is true but if we all thought like you do we wouldn’t have a club. Let’s be honest it will probably never change but it’s my club and all your moaning will not change it.

We beat Burnley and Coventry on their patch in the league cup when they were both Championship clubs and I attended both games.
Ask Brian Honour if he ever scored from a corner at Roker Park.
We beat Darlo on their patch when they were only a few seasons off being a premiership club ( according to George Reynolds, anyway ) LOL.
We were cheated out of playing at Wembley by a bunch of bricklayers and cheated out of playing in the Championship by a dubious refereeing decision.
Ya grumpy old git.

They werent giant killings though

No but they were great days for pools supporters.

I've an article from the Times I cut out about 30 years ago, it took into account any team who'd ever been in the football league at the time, even clubs like Nelson, Darwin, Southport etc, taking into account every season and final placing and the team with the worst average up to that point were unfortunately us(Pools).

Certainly better than what went before and what came after. Still miffed, though, that when other clubs have great days, they win something , a cup or a title or a giant killing etc , but not us. With the changes in the game, a proper giant killing appears now almost impossible, with teams playing weakened teams etc, seems like we missed our chance.

Less of the old please, I am the youth wing on this board

For the record this is what I think, pound for pound have been Pools best 5 results in my time and probably in our history.

1. Pools 2 v 1 Crystal Palace FA Cup 3 January 1978
2. Blackburn Rovers 1 v 2 Pools League Cup 3 October 1974
3. Pools 2 v 0 Stoke City FA Cup 3 January 2009
4. Pools 1 v 0 Crystal Palace FA Cup 3 January 1993
5. Pools 3 v 1 WBA League Cup 2 August 2008

that would not be pools fault. if there ever was a chelsea re match at the vic and they decided to play a really weakened side it would not be the fault of us if we beat em. the record books would give it as a pools victory and not mention it was only against a chelsea 3rd choice outfit. anyway you pick pools as its your hometown club where the rest of your family have done before you in many cases. you live in hope for the good days but really know they might not happen but carry on. if you wanted instant success then its better if fans just moved on to somewhere they may get it. however bad a game at the vic is i,d rather see that than some plastic premier league encounter and be accused of just following success.

Whilst I would not argue with Hordens pick of games the best games in the history of Pools was surely in the 1950s. All fa cup games with teams playing full sides.
Jan 1952 Burnley away. Lost 1 - 0
Jan 1954 Stoke away lost 6- 2
Jan 1955 Notts Forest home drew but lost replay 2 - 1
Jan 1956 Chelsea home lost 1- 0 to an own goal. They were the reigning champions and game remembered for Roy Bentley, England’s centre forward head butting a Pools defender.
Jan 1957 Manchester United home lost 4 - 3 in front of record crowd of over 17000 after being three down. This was the great Busby Babes side the year before the disaster.
A golden era for Pools fans which I’ll never forget Newton,Moore,Stamper, still just trips of my tongue along with Johnson,Luke, McGuigan ha the memories. I still have copies of the Mail special match editions for some of these games.
Few supporters had cars then and special supporters trains were laid on.

Before you say it Horden yes we did lose them all but what a great time.

[quote="Johnjo1"
A golden era for Pools fans which I’ll never forget Newton,Moore,Stamper, still just trips of my tongue along with Johnson,Luke, McGuigan ha the memories. I still have copies of the Mail special match editions for some of these games.
Few supporters had cars then and special supporters trains were laid on.[/quote]
missed all those games but my old man attended em all. i was deemed too young to go because of the big crowds. actually the players of that era are still remembed by me where most of the more recent ones are lost in my mind till they are mentioned on here.

Damn ! beat me to it

Always the bridesmaid never the bride, that's us. Good effort at Burnley though, and at home to Forest I'll give you that. Chelsea were reigning champions, I believe and by all accounts kicked us off the park.

Probably our best period, 1954-58, even better than the IOR years 2003-08

missed all those games but my old man attended em all. i was deemed too young to go because of the big crowds. actually the players of that era are still remembed by me where most of the more recent ones are lost in my mind till they are mentioned on here.[/quote]

Yep 38000 crowd at Burnley, apart from our game at Sunderland and play off final the biggest crowd we have played in front of , we took 5000 allegedly.

I was stood behind the rink end goal for the Chelsea game. Roy Bentley the great England centre forward was in Wattie Moore's pocket. As for dishing out the physical stuff, our lads weren't shrinking violets when it came to a battle either.
Ray Thompson and Jackie Newton were proper tacklers. When those two tackled you knew about it.
I remember one game when Billy Linacre was on our right wing and was getting kicked to death by the opposing left back, Thompson went up for a corner, not to try for a goal, but to introduce himself to this brute of a left back. The corner was cleared and everybody moved out of the box, except the full back, who was pole axed and flat out. It happened right in front of me. Nothing was given. I reckoned the ref must have seen it and erred on the side of justice.
Funny how things like that stick with you.

Great memories Derwent.

Obviously the physical aspect was how in the past lower league teams occasionally got one over their more illustrious counterparts. Chelsea obviously did their homework and matched us physically that day. Hereford did a similar job on us in 1973

things like that were expected in those days. knew peter madden the ex rotherham centre half back in those days who actually said that in those days you lived in the town where you played and had fans who lived near you. you were expected to take it and dish it out and if fans thought you didn,t they,d quickly tell you so in the street. thompson may not have got anywhere near the present pools side but has the game as a spectical improved for it.

I don’t see how you can say Thompson would not get anywhere near present side he actually played 395 games for Pools he was a tough tackling fullback who was in fact an ex winger who was quite good going forward apart from being a ‘hard nut’.

if he had been born 20 years ago then he might. however the game has changed so much over 60 odd years and i doubt any of older fans heroes would make it now if they were as they were then. on the opposite note todays lads would not have got a look in back then if they played as they do in todays game and not in the 50,s culture. think the best one is the full back who has a weakness in defending and the winger who cannot take a corner.

Thompson did the job that was asked of him at Pools and the fact that he was asked to do it 395 times( in a bloody good side) tells me that he was pretty good at it, and he was. Of all the left backs we have had in my time watching Pools, Mr Thompson is in the top three alongside Bryan Drysdale and Rob McKinnon. Fancy dan right wingers got no change out of any of them.
Today's full back may be different but who's to say that he would be better or worse at the way the job is done now. The majority of players these days don't know what it is like to play for a full ninety minutes, knee deep in mud and a ball that was most times a soggy lump, with no substitutes. They got a knock but carried on. We've already established the game was full of lads who were allowed to tackle and did. The difference is that they took the knocks and got on with it.
Maybe if the likes of Ray Thompson had the billiard tables the current players enjoy playing on, with a ball that stayed the same weight for ninety minutes and the molly coddling they get with the modern sports science and diet control, he too might have been able to demonstrate a few more silky skills.
He was a man of his time, playing a man's game and he did it with courage and dedication and a decent smattering of skill and I'm sure his determination, skill in defending and general attitude would not be ignored by the likes of DC, should Raymond turn up tomorrow as a twenty one year old.
I enjoyed watching him play and it is a tribute to him that after all these years of trials and tribulations and everything that has gone on, he still stands out in my memory.

It is always difficult to compare sportsmen from different generations but I believe a good sportsmen then would be a good sportsman now, it’s in their makeup.

Good point, Mr J.

think that is true for individual games like boxing, golf and tennis that are really the same as they were 100 years ago. not too sre they would all flourish in modern day team sports due to their size and the inability to take to the sports science and diets required of em.

I don’t agree they would have been born into a different era that takes fitness more seriously.

Sitting on the fence here. see both sides of the argument. People are bigger, taller, have better diets and medicine so would have a distinct advantage over those from the past. However if those from the past where born into this , then they would adapt as they would know nothing different. This was actually true of working class kids born after the war who were healthier than those born before, because of the ration and the NHS etc.

If anything, I think past players would love the bowling green pitches and technology of today, it would make them even better, whereas could today's players cope with the pitches and training regimes of the past, as big and as healthy as they now are?. I doubt they are as tough, mentally and physically, but that's good news because we now live in a more civilised world , that's progress. The modern day player is faster and fitter though , but there is more to being a footballer than just fitness and speed.