I thought I heard garlic bread was the future…..don’t tell me it was just a rumour

have you tasted it.

Classic.

think both us and sutton will have to rely upon team spirit getting them over the line. as for barrow i imagine their side differed quite a lot from their first game to their last one. they seemed to bring in plenty when they could and that just about saved them.

after i had one mouthful of the stuff without knowing it went quickly into the past for me never mind the future.

I came onto this thread not realising it was a meeting of ‘Wrist Slashers and the Suicide Squad’. Oh dear, I’ll make my excuses now and leave.

Interesting how some people on here didn't make one post last season...yet as soon as the forecast becomes stormy again, they all crawl out of the woodwork...

Think you've missed your mark there Mr. Brasil. People have their own reasons for taking a break from the Bunker and the real birds of ill omen have yet to appear - they're biding their time till Pools have had a couple of bad results in League 2.

Anyway, it just occurred to me - shouldn't you be Brasil Bush?

after bad news on bad news you cannot blame any fan from feeling downhearted about pools and fearing the worst. until some good news surfaces fans are bound to show their negativity.

Raj Singh has supported the manager sufficiently to gain promotion and there's no reason to expect less support going forward. Remember that Pools won't get a penny from the EFL until half way through the season. DC will have a plan. Worry thee not.

It was half expected that not all players would sign and woud get offers from elsewhere. It's disappointing to a degree when certain players move on but there is plenty of players out there. We have to trust DC will find players who want to be here and take the opportunity. We have to look forward. Great to be back in the league.

My Bradford friend says we're interested in James Hanson, take that with a pinch of salt as it's probably bollocks

hope not as his career seemed to have gone down the pan since leaving them. mind you saying that at least he did well at one club unlike oates before the middle of last season.

A few weeks ago everyone was on a massive high. Is their any wonder fans are down at the minute? Lost 34 goals in their team to of all teams Harrogate and Mansfield. The team we had would of been in the top 7 of this league I've no doubt about it, now we're struggling to even put out a team. The club must of known their was a chance we would get promoted so why do we appear to be so ill prepared, and why oh why did we let one of our star strikers contracts run down.

Its typical pools that we win something then a few weeks later are in total disarray, it may be ok on the day in 4 weeks time, but for a professional football club we once again appear on the outside to be amateur.

I think, from what Dave Challinor said, we did have a Plan A and and Plan B in place. Why its taking so long to make new signings I don't know. Perhaps covid in the club after all of the celebrations hasn't helped. I'm sorry to be losing Armstrong, Oates and Bennett but we have to trust DC to replace them with better. Armstrong couldn't get into the Salford team, Oates had dropped out of the football league with a pretty poor goal scoring record and Bennett couldn't get into the Stockport team. I think the style of football we played really suited their strengths. Plus some NL defences were pretty poor. They may all struggle to score and get games this season. Lets wait a little while to see who DC can bring in. It may be players with a better pedigree than the ones we've missed out on. Plus DC has done quite well in the loans market. Two of the above were loanees. Give the club a little longer to get players in before getting too down.

I will watch with interest how the players who have left perform. Sometimes it’s not just how the player performs, but how they perform in a certain system of play. Some players thrive at one club and perform like a donkeys arse at another.

Mansfield have 7 strikers on their books, Oates in a couple of months time might be begging to come on loan to us.

It was interesting to hear DC say that Oates was offered a good deal but didn't want to back himself. Maybe he himself doesn't think he'll reproduce last season's form. Time will tell.

I took that to mean that Pools had offered Oates a contract that was heavily weighted in terms of goal bonuses. In which case, Mansfield may have offered a more secure base salary. It also might be a case of Oates feeling Mansfield have a better chance of promotion than us and they offered a little bit more money, so a nice halfway house between what Pool’s offered and going to a big club on a lot more money and just sitting in the reserves for the next three years.

You might be right but we'll never know unless Oates tells us and, considering he didn't even tell the club what he was contemplating, it is hardly likely that he'll tell you or me.
He's gone, we move on.

thats totally true. bennett is a good example of this where he scored more goals in a month for us than he did a full season with stockport and was a regular before the new manager came in. we have all seen the best and worst of oates even last season. as someone else said armstrong never really got a look in at salford. really doubt more than one of these will come off with their new clubs next season where all three proved themselves as pools players.

he,ll just be in a long list of players who wish they had stayed at a club instead of following the cash. makes me wonder how really shit scared some players are when their careers are coming to an end and have to get every single penny out of the game before they get to that stage. there is a longer life outside playing pro football for all of them and that should be their biggest concern in doing something about their future than a few quid a week.

Oates signed a deal at Mansfield for 104k first year 116k second year , we offered £62400 per year plus goal bonus one year deal

well no one could really say that the pools offer was not a decent offer. no wonder clubs get in a financial hole offering contracts to players after they had just a good half of a season and done sod all before it anywhere in their career.

I am sure dc wants to prove himself in league 2 and not say I can do well in a non league management role, I have a good feeling he will do well with us and hopefully get the backing and the players he needs never say die.

That's a massive difference in the basic wage allegedly offered over 1 year, let alone 2. It depends what the bonus per goal scored amounted to, but it would have to be 14 goals at £3,000 each to compensate for the difference in the basic wage - pretty much a no-brainer, particularly if you are 1 of 7 strikers

Hope Sterry signs tomorrow.

I find it hard to believe that players at our level would command salaries like that ?

Stockport are paying 3k a week plus for madden, look at it another way raj is saving us a fortune at the minute by paying virtually no one.

Harrogate apparently paying Armstrong a similar number as well. Just shows how radical the game has changed since we left the EFL.

Oh yeah well aye I really do believe yer…..

can understand madden getting 3k a week as he is a proven player over the years in the league. armstrong is a big gamble.

Armstrong was probably our best striker in the last 15 years, scored when it mattered, id of sacrificed 4 or 5 players on cheap wages to have him here. The way its going we will be scratching round at Boro again for someone.

DC Pools’ extended season as a result of promotion via the National League play-offs has left them playing catch-up on their League Two rivals.

And they have missed out on a number of potential targets as a result.

“We didn’t potentially envisage that players we would have been interested in, they were due in for pre-season training the day after we finished our season on June 20,” added the Hartlepool manager.

“Players were getting swallowed up in terms of recruitment so it’s been slow and I expect it to be fairly slow on the whole for the next couple of weeks to be honest.

It’s looking bad

he might have been but without decent service into the box he might have been as poor as the rest. would be pointless also him scoring 30 plus goals a season when his goals ended up as consolation ones after we regularly ship in goals at the other end. you never really get a good team spirit in these type of sides. our hope should be signing decent players in all positions that are still open, but longer we do not then the boro connection gets closer and closer.

shades of sunday morning football where players do not know each others names. we cannot bring a good ringer in to counteract this.

Armstrong went to Harrogate so quickly it seems very likely it was done deal even before the play off final. Nowt Pools could have done about that.

Signing good players on loan was key to Pools winning promotion. We wouldn't have gone up without the likes of Armstrong, Cass, Magloire and Bennett.

There's every reason to think Dave Challinor will be able to exploit Pools' new status as an EFL club to bring back Cass and an all round better standard of loanees than last season. That said, there's still a ton of work to do to build up the core squad of players who have signed on the dotted line for Pools. Really hoping for some positive news this week!

Cass is going elsewhere.

Port Vale according to the Mail.

Where did you get this information from....?

Bit of good news on its way.

Sterry 2 year deal

I hope you're right. I'm really hacked off by all the doom and gloom.

seems a pointless loan move with us and them playing in the same division if true. might as well stay more local with pools if he cannot be loaned out to at least a division 1 club.

You have to remember we weren't paying much towards these loans if anything with some of them, Challinor hasn't got much hope unless we show a tiny bit of ambition.

Think Newcastle want him in a different environment.