RS has a track record of walking when the fans turn on him. I suspect that he’s had most of his investment back and he can easily trouser the parachute payments to clear the balance.

We are not going to get a white knight riding in to save the club so that leaves you with a Darlo type model. The supporters trust is a dead duck in my view, the chance was there at the time when Coxall exited but the then board didn’t have the skills, ambition or imagination. I don’t see that it’s any different now and it’s pretty much invisible. The trust needed to raise 250k at that point which I believed was doable. I didn’t see the need to pay parasites like Sage, I would have opted for administration and a reformed club which was debt free but crucially had a ground to play in at a monthly rent then of £1500 a month. Had we have done that we would be at worst back in the National league which as we now know is where we’re at anywhere.

A word of warning to anyone considering getting involved in this type of organisation; be ready to get nothing but personal insults, threats and grief. I certainly wouldn’t do it again under any circumstances. It just ain’t worth it.

By the way, I’d give Supporters Direct a wide berth, it’s like dealing with the civil service which incidentally is where most of its staff came from. Jacqui Forster was an exception and bucked the trend which is why she was forced out. RIP Jacqui x

You did you best Mr I.
You an Paddy from same era as me.
But as it stands now im 55 n me 48 years of being a Poolie has ended while RS is still Chairman.
Mite offend the few of his worshippers.
Cudent give a forend of Primate.

We might not see eye to eye on some points Mr I, but fully agree on this one

I said something similar to a fellow poolie earlier

Raj needs to go, he needs to shoulder the majority of the blame today.

Agree on the thoughts of being a debt free club a few years back, we would've been no further back today, maybe even better off

There have always been plenty of 'if only" as a pools fan.. no doubt there are plenty more to come.

As painful as today is.. come the new season, I'll still be looking at the fixtures and where I can get to.

The intangible benefit of being fan owned is the transparency. There’s no vague numbers around the finances and having an elected supporter based board with a couple of professionals means that there are no agendas other than the success of the team. No owner egos to deal with and everyone pointing in the same direction.

Also don’t underestimate the value of the council owning the ground. Look what Darlo have achieved without a ground and imagine where they would be if they’d still had Feethams all along.

There are plenty of successful fan owned clubs by the way, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Wycombe for example.

Mr I's got it in one.

Raj’s role is surely untenable now?
Trouble is, what if he decides he’s staying put?
This season is like the Titanic spotting the iceberg from fifty miles away and still managing to hit the bloody thing…. It was avoidable.

He needs to put his cards on the table and declare plans for next season and if it’s to stay around and bounce back transparently back Askey (who I hope stays)
No spin or BS
Personally I think he needs to leave if we can find someone honest to invest, I suspect he will end up sticking around and we will end up having a miserable season similar to our first season in national league

Question for you Snowy and others:

So what happened between the Stevenage game and the Newport game.
Cause something did, Players have been like chalk and cheese since.

The Sylla debacle happened just before the Stevenage game, whatever was the cause, or was behind it, Everything seemed to turn to the proverbial S**** after that

The truth is that RJ cannot be forced to sell up and if it turns nasty he holds almost all the cards.

That’s when we came off the rails and reverted to type….. only a fortnight ago I was driving down the M18 towards Grimsby on Good Friday but only because the A1 was blocked and could see the signs for Grimsby, but coming home from holiday, ended up going through York and got home just in time to watch the second half on I follow….and since then the team has lost it’s way and boy would I like to know why….the ‘problem’ with Sylla, what was that all about, something must have happened, but no one knows what, all very odd.

I think some folk think owners can be changed like managers, if only that was possible eh?
I want to see what the reaction is going to be to this shambles…someone on the radio said it was due to getting rid of G L as manager, no it wasn’t, the fault was not getting a capable manager in straight away to get bedded in with the players for the remainder of the season, that’s where we went wrong…. instead we drifted along rudderless, but who recommended Hartley to Raj…?

Spot on Mr I

It’s not about exchanging owners. It’s about accepting the complete ineptitude of the current one - of which nobody wants to work for. The revolving door of staff. One common denominator - RAJ SINGH.

Get him out the football club. Simple as that.

we cannot get him out, its his decision only and we need to be very careful how he is treated on any social media. we do not want to get the blokes back up too much and then he sells the club to a known wrong un and the shit show continues and even worse. i,d like him to sell up but yesterdays game was not the deciding factor. if we had won and stayed up eventually i really doubt we,d have done all that much better next season. possibly safe mid table if some of the new players came off.

we all know what sylla,s first name is don,t we. mohamad. not a name associated with the meaning of easter. he could be devout muslim and all what the fasting of ramadan is all about.

He probably use Social media as his vet out clause.
After takeing the ST money n Parachute money.
Fully expecting the Darlo /Scunthorpe trend to happen now.

At the risk of labouring the point; the big difference is the ground is not owned by the club but the community in the form of the council. In the two examples you mention the stadium was a key factor in the demise of both Scarborough and Darlo. This was the reason I put the work in to get it listed As ann asset of community value. It’s important.

It means that if any chairman walked away we would be fine eventually because it cannot be asset stripped other than cash in the bank.

across football so many fans think the club is being held back because some other party owns the ground and is seen as holding the club back and lack of investment in it. All that is fine if there club is on the up and staying there. If not ownership by a single individual can mean the death of the club as fans know it or a lego construction on the edge of the town and the profits of the sale long gone. Scunthorpe united anyone.

How do you propose to get him out???

If you do manage to get rid of him and somebody else takes over, wouldn't that be exchanging owners????

for all his defects i could accept him if he was totally transparent without the spin and BS. just tell us all as it is and even if this has an adverse reaction on season ticket sales we know where we all are. fans would rally round i,m sure and no one likes being short changed with untruths.

Chester are another who we could be playing next season as they are 3rd in the National North table

Spot on Mr I BTW really sad the crap you endured for trying to do the correct thing for our club but you always get jealous people I afraid so so sad.

Totally agree

and playing at the same time when a premier league NE derby is taking place if the boro or the cats go up via the play offs. with us being non league more than a few could drift away to one of these clubs just to watch league football. will make ideal new fans for either as watching a team losing is in an ex poolies DNA.

Raj Singh went from saying we had a similar budget to morecambe when they went up, to then saying we had a play off budget. We know without looking at the finances this was utter bullshit, Everyone in football knows most the Scottish league is tripe on poor wages , unless you play for maybe 4 of the better clubs.

Then we signed loads of kids, or players from non league teams. He wasn't exactly going out signing 20 goal strikers or midfielders that were decent from league 1 or 2 clubs.

He won't get away with that spiel this year, apart from the few who won't have anything said against him.

It seems to me Pools have a loyal fan base and if they start winning games in the NL the fans will flock back to the Vic.

Some people accuse me of being one of those who won't have anything said against Raj but the reason I don't have a go at him is because, until we have a genuine interest from another prospective owner, he is all we've got. If he walks away we could be another Bury, or as Mr Bigdog described it, "dumped in the gutter". There are enough people throwing hatred and abuse at him without me getting involved.
Raj has definitely lost his way since the heady days of saving the club and then our return to the EFL. We are going backwards but is abusing him and shouting for him to get out etc etc going to make the situation better or worse. I don't know but there is certainly not a very long queue of would be genuine alternatives snaking its way down Clarence Road. I wish there was, I really do.
Like most life long Poolies I feel utterly helpless and am not able to change the situation one little bit. None of us are.
I sometimes wonder, after his experiences at Darlo, why he took an interest in owning Pools. However I thought, like many others, that he surely would have learned lessons from his experiences at Darlo and would not make the same mistakes again. That has turned out to be wishful thinking.
What happens now?
Well I think Raj has a few options.
He can carry on regardless and engender more hate and abuse being thrown at his door or he can admit that, if he wants to continue to own the club, he is not the man to run it and therefore appoint someone else into the Chair so he can then go and concentrate on making more money from the areas he is good at but he has to commit that some of those monies have to be injected into the club.
He can make it known that the club is for sale or, at least encourage others to take a stake in the club who are prepared to contribute financially.
The next option is the one I don't like but it is a genuine option so I am not going to rule it out and that is he can walk away, with all that entails.
It's not a pleasant situation that we find ourselves in but we have to make the best of it with or without Raj but, like it or not, he has all the cards and the more hatred and abuse that is thrown in his direction the less those cards will fall in our favour.
That is my take on the matter.

raj has tried in the past to get others with money into the club without success. Jeff Stelling will obviously mix with people who have a bob or two and imagine he has asked the same question. until someone comes out of the woodwork we are where we are and can do sod all about it. Just hope for more transparancies and less half truths and being told what we want to hear and not what are the facts. we as fans do not ask for much and demanding championship football in 5 years but a competative side that actually wins more games than it loses and can get OTT on here when a rare defeat happens.

Well put, Mr Derwent.

Excellently put Mr Derwent. There is no doubt that the Chairman has lost his way and made a load of bad decisions since we got back in the Football League. These decisions have now cost us that hard-won League status and many on here feel that it is right to hurl abuse at Mr Singh and talk about boycotts, demos and a dark descent to football oblivion. Raj Singh is accountable for our relegation but many others have to take their share of responsibility, particularly the players, all three managers and the various coaches, our recruitment guy etc. Our shortcomings on Match Day 1 were still there when the final whistle went on Match Day 44. Dodgy keeper, Full Backs who can’t stop crosses and are vastly overrated, Centre Backs who are weak no matter what combination we play, No pace, No width, An inability to do the basics and No leaders.
I’m not sure that Raj is to blame for most of that other than he agreed the appointment of the managers who made the shocking signings and, on the face of it, set a budget that was totally inadequate, although given that we had about thirty players on our books by the end of the season it is not unreasonable to think that plenty of cash has been wasted.
We are where we are. No one died. Nobody is knocking down the door to buy our club. If there was a prospective buyer out there then let’s hope that he doesn’t look at the Bunker to see the spiteful and mainly ludicrous bile that is being directed at the Chairman. Most of these people wanted Hodcroft and IOR out and look where it got us.
I don’t particularly want Raj Singh to be our Chairman/Owner for much longer. The Chinese are right ‘The Fish Rots From The Head’. But more than that I want players who care about the club and have a shred of ability, managed by someone who can see the weaknesses that we fans see week after week. That may or may not be John Askey.

Pools were 19th out of 24 in the list of amounts spent on agents by League 2 clubs in 22/23. All of the clubs that are in with a shout of a play-off place spent considerably more than that, so you can draw your own conclusions.

On the other hand, 5 of the clubs in this division regularly attract crowds bigger than the Vic's total capacity, so a bit of realism about how well supported Pools are is also in order.

The truth of the matter is Pools really are a big club in National League terms, especially if Wrexham and Notts County go up. No HUFC owner worth his salt has any excuse not to lay out a play off budget for next season.

It doesn't matter who is in charge of the club or how successful they are, there will always be people thinking they should do more to make us better. When IOR had us on the brink of the Championship people were still complaining.

It is easy to spend other peoples' money and many teams have followed the route these supporters want, like Bury, Scunthorpe, Portsmouth, Bradford and others. The crazy spending on players this season can't be good for finances but maybe in the summer with the sales of useful assets we can overcome that. The problem is we have a lot of unwanted players on wages that will require losses to get rid of them. So whether we can bounce straight back is questionable.

I suppose an advantage is a lower level of payments to Sage will help.

He has us by the balls, there’s no line of millionaires vying to take control of the club and providing he has a thick enough skin and doesn’t visit social media he’s armour plated.
Sometimes it reminds me of a toddler balancing a priceless Ming vase.
Let’s just hope some realism sets in, you really do have to speculate to accumulate in football.

Emotions are running high and perhaps the immediate aftermath of the day before was the incorrect time to pass comment / judgement on the man at the top of the club. I’ll own that. Still stand behind the opinion though.

Through the endless list of mishaps and half truths we’ve endured since DC departed, we got what we deserved. Grossly mismanaged and underestimation of League 2. We all want players who care for the club and I think those who turn out for us are taken by the amazing fanbase. Unfortunately there has been reputational damage done which has made the recruitment of players & staff even more difficult. Despite big money being offered in January, not a single striker would touch us with a barge pole. RS’s programme notes didn’t help. The frenzy built up over many weeks of rumours, confirmed bids and even publicised service station meetings… for Conor Jennings to appear on deadline day.

If the money was right, Curle was as good a salesman as he said he was, then why didn’t anybody with form-reversing quality punt on playing (even on loan) for Hartlepool. Curle was confident we would get a star striker, we were shopping in an ambitious market, but even after meeting these forwards - it was a no. Even the situation with Odusina, he's all but signed, then has a last minute change of heart. Why?

Despite that… We have actually had some decent footballers at the club over the past few years and we’ve not made a dime on one. We waved off Odusina, Byrne, Molyneux and Bryn Morris - of which Byrne in particular left under dubious circumstance. Mols the hero - allegedly offered less than Hastie, so told the club to stick it.

What is quite obvious is that we need some increased investment into the club in order to compete, so having a sound transfer policy is a very good place to start. All of the above could have made us some money. So moving forward, sell Umerah for cash. Get Joe Grey out on loan. Ensure Dodds has a contract long enough for us to sell him in a year. Replace Umerah with a reputable forward with a track record of national league goals, too. Not the Ndjolis and Hamiltons of the sport. Sign players who have played well at the level you are playing at or one above, no exceptions.

Genuinely intrigued to see how it all unfolds once we’ve got the next two games done with.. for good or for worse.

Just about sums it up, trouble is Raj has us by the balls, but no apparent plan for the future.

What I cant understand is that when he was at Darlo he was constantly criticising attendances, saying we needed 2k minimum every home game. That's definitely one complaint he cant aim at you lot.
Makes you wonder if hes not actually investing any new money into the club and making it run on gate money & commercial activity alone.
Do you still have that loan hanging over you that he took out to clear off what was owed elsewhere?

I doubt if even Raj Singh's granny would describe him as thick skinned. He hates to be criticised.

The National League. We don’t need telling but word of warning even if Notts join Wrexham in L2, it’ll be tough. Until we hired DC, we looked every bit of a mid table team down there. I agree though - we should be going straight in there with a decent enough budget to see us finish in the top 7. John Askey plus a transfer window of signing genuine national league quality, no gambles this summer.

He also knows whats being said on social media or messageboards.
When he tried to get back in at Darlo there was an online chat set up to ask him questions but he pulled out before anyone got chance to ask anything as he had seen what plenty were saying online.
Personally I wanted to hear him, what his excuses were as to why he had contradicted himself a lot during the administration, why he lied about the football share etc. but we didn't even get that from him.
Even when BBC Tees lamely tried to ask him about the Darlo situation when he took over at Pools they just accepted whatever he said as gospel.

Where Raj is possibly confused is he knows he came along when no one else was prepared to have a go, he knows under his tenure we got promoted, he knows he has to get the debt he inherited cleared, so he thinks he is worthy of high esteem. What he doesn't appear to know is in football the fans won't accept any faltering of momentum. We expected last season to be one of consolidation and this season one of pushing forward again, especially with the extra cup money and gate receipts steadily rising. He announced plans for this to happen citing 2025 as the target. So far so good, so what happened to make him pull the purse strings tighter, always assuming that's what he did. Maybe if he had come clean and explained there would be a slight glitch and we would still be back on track soon enough but the silence has been deafening, an observation I have made on more than one occasion.
If he going to press on with ownership he definitely needs to get a knowledgible football understanding person in the chair, and quickly. He can't expect to get anywhere with his track record on decision making over the last two seasons. Go and get Russ Green back, a man who Hodcroft trusted implicity. We could do worse. And then Mark Simpson. Both those guys bleed blue and white. Visit Russ's office at Donny Rovers and see the Poolie memorabilia adorning it, if you don't believe me. I don't know how he gets away with it.

As Snowy said that just about sums it up BigDog.

Its been said Raj left the his seat early on saturday, Maybe realizing pools value has dropped.

RS now has a massive decision to make, Because if things don,t go well next season the
Value of the club will drop considerably.

Seems the clubs Twitter feed has dried up also, 2 days since a posting.
Deafing once again.

I wouldn’t hold your breath, what you’re suggesting is the logical way to proceed, but I’ll believe nothing till I can see it. I won’t get fooled again.

Clutching at straws here but is any League 2 being investigated about any illegal dealing which could result in points deduction/relegation?
Yes desperate times.......................................

Just a case of looking at it & if it looks too good to be true (i.e Paul Hartley's record in Scotland), it most likely is. Same can be said about the players we bought, none of them had a credible bit of experience in League 2/1 & the fact they all came in so late, recipe for disaster. If Graeme Lee is to be believed, he had some very good players lined up such as Danny Johnson, Diamond, Cook, Chapman etc. Apparently were signed but then we all know what happened next... Hartley was arrogant - exclaiming his Scottish signings as 'just footballers' - which of course, was true - but the Scottish leagues have been laid bare... Tumilty, Niang, Hastie, Hamilton, NDjoli, even Murray. So, so far off the level required and their career statistics show exactly that.

Would be great to see Umerah in the national league, although that's wishful thinking as a few clubs interested there already. Sell him & buy Cheek from Bromley? That would be a good statement, the type of signing we should look for.

Be interesting to see who does go this summer.

The thing is if these other clubs spent all season at the bottom, brought in non league players or lower Scottish teams, couldn't compete wage wise with hardly anybody in this league. Had a pre season with what was it 8 players signed on the books. How many would those clubs then get I reckon it wouldn't be much over 5 k for some of them.

So for Pools to average around 4700 by the end of the season, that is bloody well supported for such garbage thrown at us.

gillingham are a great example in what can happen if you splash the cash a bit and have good people around the club to spend it. they looked dead and buried at christmas and look at them now. what they spent they,ll get it back by keeping their league status and can imagine there season ticket numbers will bey fans up next season. just cannot see whats actually in it for raj at pools. a constant struggle with a manager revolving door and at the best he is regarded by fans as being the devil you know. would any of us carry on if this was the case as it is with him.

I would probably carry on until i was sure the next owner was genuine and would be a step forward like HH did. However I would like to think that I wouldn't preside over such a massive failure in the first place.

Go and get Russ Green back, a man who Hodcroft trusted implicity. We could do worse.

Morning Chaps,

I'm a long time reader of the Bunker though I'm exiled in Kettering (for my sins) so only manage a handful of games a season nowadays unfortunately..
However I know from first hand after lengthy conversations with Russ, both during and after
taking part in one on Jeff's marathon walks that Russ is still a massive Poolie and would come back in a heartbeat from running Doncaster Belles, however he did say he wouldn't work for RS!

From the chats I had with him that day, as and when RS does eventually disappear off into the sunset, assuming we've got any semblance of a club remaining - he would be the first person I'd approach to run the club on a day to day basis. The man's passion for the club, town and fanbase was still very much embedded. His many stories and refreshing candidness got me through a couple of rough hours walking, which helped keep my mind off the worsening blisters!

On a similar note, reckon Simmo would do the same - what a miss he has been.