You’re one of very few people who does t recognise featherstone as one of the best players in his position in this league. We created enough to win the game but poor finishing and poor defending let us down. I’m more pleased than the average Torquay supporter I know that.

thing is neither have been as influential as they were before they came back into the side. rate both em but at the moment its not working out for either. only hope is that once we get back to 1 game a week those who have played less will look equally as stale as pools do at the moment. could start to actually win games then instead of all these draws. win one, lose one is one point more than drawing both.

suppose it sums up the positives. we are not having irratic performances and are ticking over by gaing regular point a game. the negative is that we are not turning a point into 3 like sutton are doing.

For a start I don't think you know 99% of Pools fans, never mind their opinions. So there is a turd or two in your remarks.

I agree with your wishes in your 2nd paragraph, but that is what they are....wishes. I too wish that but we are only grinding out draws at the moment whilst it is Sutton who are grinding out 1-0 wins.

I agree we were poor tonight so there isn't much between our opinions really.

However DC picks the team, the formation and the tactics and I see danger. I hope that he sees it as well and I hope that he does something about it before Raj does. We appear to have lost our spark as you say and it is DC who has to conjure a new spark. If he does I will acknowledge that fact but we shall have to see.

Opinions eh.

even after the loss of spark we still with the players, formation and tactics used by DC we still could have turned draws into wins even with 10 men on the pitch. no manager can make the difference in this. players have a second to work out the right option and seem to fail in this.

Yeah I know all that. The fact remains that we didn't turn those games into wins and I don't want to be using the words could have come the end of the season.
Managers are there to make a difference and the better ones do. If we class DC as one of the better ones then he has to "do". Those are the conditions of the job, whatever our view happens to be. Ask Chris Wilder. He worked miracles at Sheffield United but is now unemployed.
That is the reality I'm afraid. Harsh as it is.

I think most of our problems are in midfield at the minute. The defence is one of the best in the division. Up front Armstrong has 10 goals since he joined and playing alongside him Oates has scored 6 since the back end of December.

Pools have a lot of midfield players and most are good enough for this level, but you wouldn't call them a well balanced group. None of them is quick and worse, nobody is scoring goals. Holohan has only scored one League goal since November, Shelton and Featherstone have one apiece in open play for the whole season, Crawford, Donaldson and White haven't scored at all and have never looked likely to.

Featherstone and White both like to sit deep and it's clear Dave Challinor rates them both highly, but it should really be a case of either/or when it comes to picking an 11.

Finally, there's Luke Williams. About a minute after he came on last night, he played a ball inside a defender for one of our forwards to run onto in the box that was as good a pass as Pools had managed all night. His record shows he can score goals for fun as well. Are we ever going to see him fit enough put a run of games together where he's on the pitch for more than 10 or 15 minutes? If only.

The team are doing well but I think what let’s us down asides from referring decisions and individual mistakes is not the quality of the regular players or their efforts but the contribution of the others in the squad or certain players who haven’t contributed as much as we would have liked for whatever reason that may be: Donaldson, molyneux, Williams, MacDonald, crawford, Bloomfield, ofosu. We had two regulars on the bench last night in Oates and Holohan who really should have started. I can understand to a degree why they didn’t but others need to take their opportunities when they are given them and two thirds of the way in to the season they haven’t done that. On that basis I’d be happy with us cementing a play off place and trying to get a midfielder, striker and winger on loan to try to get promoted that route.

Over the last five games this is how the current top twelve have performed pointswise.
Sutton.................13
Halifax.................13
Wrexham..............11
Stockport..............10
Bromley.................10
POOLS...................7
Maidenhead............7
Notts C..................6
Yeovil....................6
Torquay..................4
Boreham Wood........4
Eastleigh.................3

We haven't lost any but only won one and that is what worries me. Seven points out of a possible fifteen is not promotion or even play off form. Our current form has to improve and quickly.

Stockport are going for it by signing Paddy Madden from Fleetwood. He's only 31, probably on a good few quid

Maybe I let 5 years or so of garbage from Featherstone cloud my judgement on him. I will be the first to admit over the last two years he has improved considerably at times. Will we ever win anything with him as our star midfielder? I highly doubt it. We were actually playing pretty well without him when he was out injured. But it’s the same open problem with him and the rest of the midfield, they do not dominate enough against poorer teams, that’s not all down to Featherstone thou

It’s no doubt about it this is our best chance of getting out of this league, are we blowing it? Possibly. We got into a great position but just haven’t quite had the luck , maybe better players to put more pressure on Sutton. Thing that’s worrying for the next couple of years you will have Wrexham and Stockport trying to buy the league. It’s imperative we finish 2nd or third and are at home. Pools away to a Stockport or Wrexham in the play offs, would be a struggle no doubt, no matter how we have got in the league against them. A win Saturday and who knows, might get us going again. Harsh reality of being in this league you have to win most weeks.

The King's Lynn chairman was talking about it on their bizarre streaming 'commentary' - basically stream of consciousness stuff from him with the game intruding every now and again. He said Madden's agent had told him that Stockport really pushed the boat out to get Madden and gave him a 3 year deal.

They've signed at least 3 players in the last couple of weeks. Probably no coincidence that Southam-Hales and Kitching have disappeared from their matchday squads, unless they're both injured.

Apparently they paid 250 k for him. Crazy money, but if he wins them promotion, he will earn them a lot more back.

We just cant compete financially with the likes of them. I am not blaming Raj its just the way it is.

both injured. back shortly.

thats the big IF though. i for one would not be over excited about splashing 250k for a division one striker. a player who has played a whole career in that division with division 1 players around him, giving him division 1 standard service on division 1 standard playing surfaces. now he,s got a load of non leaguers around him playing on either bogs or grassless bumpy surfaces. after all their past financial problems you would have thought they,d know better. no club should fully trust any new owner to stay for the long haul who may leave at the drop of a hat and wants his money back.

when you have holohan and molyneux not scoring like they are capable to do as well as not firing on all cylinders you have a problem. then you never know which sheldon is going to turn up from one match to another as well. know challinor is looking to bring a couple in but where can he get them from at this stage of the season. other clubs will be trying to bring players in and its pointless just bringing in players to up the numbers who are no better than what we have. with evey player back, playing at their full potential i doubt any team would fancy playing pools especially at the vic.

I agree but the big question is how do we bring each player's potential to it's peak and who is responsible for it. Players in our league are there for a reason and one of the main reasons is they blow hot and cold. Consistency is mostly cited as the problem and very few teams in this league have that. Sutton appear to have it at the moment and are beginning to run away with it but people are still asking can they keep it up.
There is a massive imbalance between automatic promotion and relegation in this league. One automatic promotion but four automatic relegations. That is brutal on the face of it. I personally think there should be more scope for automatic promotion.
In our league it is two up but four down but in the league above us it is the other way round..............WHY.

its turkeys voting for christmas again. doubt pools or any other ex league side once promoted would vote for more promotion/relegation sports from div.2/national league. some say it would give ex league clubs a better chance to get back into the league. until this season it certainly would not have helped pools for a start. you could add the names of wrexham, stockport, chesterfirld , aldershot , barnet , halifax and dagenham to the list. division 2 could basically end up with well over half its number being traditional non league clubs and relegation from division 1 would feel like dropping into non league football.

Yeah. I can't think of anything that I like about this league. It is what it is however and only emphasises the fact how desperate I am for us to get promoted.

honestly if pools got to the play off final this season and lost it would bother me far more than the cardiff defeat did. if i found the genie in the bottle one wish would be just to get out of this tin pot shit show. remember years ago me and my lad used to go to the occasional non league game just for a laugh at fans and shit players. now its become serious.

That's how I feel. I was thinking of the Grimsby fans as I know quite a few and they were absolutely devastated when they dropped into this league. It took them 5 years to get back up. They must be bricking it at the moment. It's got to be one of the hardest leagues to get out of, unless you go the wrong way out.