We were crap against Ebbsfleet and we were crap again tonight.

Like every crumb of optimism this season, it is immediately shot down. Seriously, has the club been cursed by Hartley’s Scottish spell?

It's not the signings it's the attitude. Why do they think it is ok to get a free kick in a dangerous position 3 minutes in to the game and kick it straight out for a fkn goal kick.? In those conditions? They must have been told to put it in the box and see what happens. Test the keeper. Nah just give them the ball back. That set the scene for me. Kiddy were so much better in the second half. Used the conditions to their advantage. We play as if we dont know what our srengths are because we haven't really got any unfortunately. Unless Mancini scores a pearler we are dependant upon a defensive mistake.

Dixon inside the first minute almost let them in by using his chest as oppose to his hands, you sometimes need to see it to believe it

To be fair we made a few chances in the first half. I suppose they can say that ah well.

His kicking is appalling. We might as well just give the opposition a throw in (just past the half way line) every time we get a goal kick.

Clutching at positives - his throwing distribution is good though.

Phillips is unproven. Just remember. Let the football do the talking.

If we’d hired Micky Mellon - for instance - I’d say we were in safe hands. I wish KP all the very best but it’s another gamble for me. Tin hat on!!

The best attacking move came from that black cat who jinked down the right wing

Completely non- plussed by Phillips
He’s 50 so not young by coaching standards, his one job was at a club with a much larger budget than the opposition….just like Hartley and Harrison

Not saying he will be shit but in terms of managing a club it’s a complete gamble

Dixon didn't have a bad game considering the ball was moving around like a penny floater in a force 10. Not sure he was at fault for the goal at all, the defender ducked under the cross ffs. All season we've let opposition sides get way too many crosses in.
I'd say blame for last night is more the outfield players not being able to score goals. Why did we start with 2 holding midfielders at home to the bottom club? That's 7 of the 11 on the pitch playing defensive roles!

It’s always a gamble…. Would you advise us to tread water till Killip moves into management….?

Agreed, it is a gamble but there is a difference between a 2/1 shot and an 8/1 shot.

If you hire someone who has proven success within the division you are operating in, the odds shorten on your gamble. If you hire someone who has never operated or succeeded at the level (I.E Lee, Hartley, Phillips), your odds lengthen. John Askey was a shrewd appointment at the time, especially as he very nearly kept us up. But there is a big difference in the level of gamble when it comes to managerial and player recruitment. We saw as much with the Scottish experiment that has essentially led to the mess we are in today.

I know we are in a completely different dimension financially to them, but just look at the business Oldham are doing. Hiring a manager who is a proven winner at NL level. Signings players proven or better than this level - a forward line of Dallas and Norwood - that’s a team looking upwards not over their shoulder.

Some of our best ever seasons we're with novice managers, eg Murray, Turner, Cooper?

The famous Paul Murray - lasted 6 weeks in the role before being sacked.

I’m not denying there’s exceptions - just need to look at Carrick at Boro to see that. In fairness, Keith Curle should have been a steady pair of hands, and we all know how that ended up.

Fans dont seem to see that though they think because you sign players from league 3 they are good enough, they dont look at their history, how they dont play more than 20 games a season, injury prone or whatever, other teams sign quality we sign players on the hope they come good. A few do, but then the rest of your team is then made up of poor quality.

Zero to Hero to Zero to -

Who knows what come Saturday? If message boards were assessed by psychiatrists The Bunker would be far along the schizophrenia spectrum.
In retrospect, it’s hard to argue with Dr. Kev’s prognosis - we’ll finish 6th bottom.

Can be forgiven for losing some sense of reality after that second half last night....

lets give him a chance. i doubt one single game will tell us if the bloke will succeed where more have failed. if we,d have hammered them 5 nil everyone would be all over him even with the same players who he,d possibly want to ship out. i,ll give him last night as a learning curve as it looked like he got his half time team talk wrong by how we performed in the second half.

Managers with proven records. Virtually every manager with ‘proven ability’ have also been sacked a couple of times for failure. That’s the nature of the game a managerial merry go round. It’s all just a gamble.

T’was Blyth and Sweeney who did for Murray…and it was the doldrums period when IOR were packing their bags.

Excellent attendance last nite 3200.
The foundations for better times are there for sure.
UTP.

what annoys me is how good a manager someone is thats just based on a winning percentage of games. i,d guess if askey and cook at chesterfield had swapped jobs before the season started there,s would be different by now but no indicator of how good or bad they actually are in the job.

Maybe he means Alan Murray????

i would not have given it as he was backing into their lad when he was grappled. if it had been given to them for the same thing i,d have been furious.

the most annoying thing about those mentioned is that when we are winning and controlling games they are really good players. however once we struggle they just cannot use this ability to change a game and go into their shell.

Kev,
Pools best performance was beating York at their place earlier in the season.
Lose on Saturday and we won't see 3000+ for some time.
The irony is that if we were winning most weeks in NL North next season, there would be 4000+.

If people want to have hope of the play offs, why shouldn't they. You don't have to if you don't wish. There's hope until there's no hope.

I've got to say it's a bit rich coming from you. For two and a half years you have ranted against Raj in the hope that he gets himself gone from the club. You have had a long time to give that a rest with one attempt at it that lasted a short while but your hatred got the better of you and off you went again and are still at it.
Maybe you should practice what you preach.

This is my analysis from last night - given i took the easy option and watched it from the comfort of my sofa with a hot Broth and a Guinness!

We started the game like a deer in the headlights - shit scared of the wind and shit scared of their big Omatayo forward. Jack Lambert id imagine was the gaffers pick of who to watch for them aswell as another kid whom Mickey Barron mentioned during commentary aswell.
We settled finally which looked good, passed the ball and got into some form of actual football rhythm (almost looked like a good side for a period). THis is when our best 2 chances fell and almost a 3rd given we could of had the ball into the box. Its times like those you have to make sure. We simply dont have the fire power up top to make anything decent happen. This was the theme then throughout !

Playing the 2 holding mids against rock bottom sides is a criminal act. I know we dont have much else, but we did have Cooke on the bench. Also id rather play Burton in a wide left midfield position than have Wallace just being totally inaffective. Dont get me wrong he probably had one of his better halfs in a pools shirt but it meant absolutely feck all when your 1-0 down against bottom of the league !

Grey yet again isnt showing me enough to warrant him being a starting player - we must get a wide player and another forward into this side.
yes we are missing Mani D and Umerah which doesnt help but last night we totally ran out of ideas.

Mancini should of been dragged aswell as he was uninterested and buggered after 60 mins

It's all very well saying the players aren't good enough, but the conundrum is why when a lot of them were involved in our best start to a season for years (yes, this season)?
Dixon, Fergy, Mani O, Wallace, Crawford, Mancini, Cooke all played in the first 10 games or so and performed to a good standard, what's happened to them?

Agreed again, I'm not disputing the nature of football management being a gamble & circumstantial - suppose with our recent record of managerial appointments, it is fair to say we have got more wrong than right. Notts County are an example of a club who have really nailed this though under great ownership.

What i'm saying is the same as what I said when we were signing the Scottish players under Hartley, if you compare the recruitment policies vs other clubs of our size in the same division, it has left a little to be desired. This time around I think we've been unlucky with injuries and I think Mani D is a great signing that we took away from Halifax. Mancini also a good acquisition.

We have had two recruitment 'leads' in Darren Kelly & now Monks within one season, so hardly time to really make a stamp. In the season when Hartley came in, we had Chris Trotter, who had a list of targets that PH decided were not for him. Believe Cooke was one that was suggested to PH that he did sign off on though.

There is a good opportunity there now for next season given the 2 year deals of Hartley era are coming to an end & you can start to move things forward, potentially with a new formation & system of playing, bringing pace & trickery in to the side which is badly lacking at the moment (midfields of Crawf, Cooke, Feaths, Wallace).

A bit rich lol you have defended whats gone for two years now thats rich. You have had a long time to come out and say oh hang on, this isnt good enough for a club our size but you havent.

If people want to be believe in fairy tails then i appologise, the play offs are just that. They can keep believing a side thats getting beat most weeks will make the play offs then yes you are right i shouldnt stop them dreaming about it. Im big enough to say i get it wrong, you dont and have never once said you get it wrong.

So yes anyone that still thinks the play offs are possible im sorry your right they certainly are.

Alan Murray had zero experience as either a player or coach, wasn't he commercial manager? Took over the reins after the sad departure of Sir Cyril and got us promoted.

Just looked at the league table there if we win the next 14 matches we could end up with 76 points. That would comfortably get us in the play offs by around 6 or 7 points. Its still on.

apart from the other games we have lost if we had beaten fylde and kidderminster which i guess we were favourites to do so we,d be very close to them now. as a team we have not even had a shock victory yet which all the others seem to get if only once a season. we are where we are in the league which is hardly surprising with players form differing on a match to match basis.

I thought we were safe with Askey.

Just seen the goal on twitter, And the closing down on the edge of the box was disgraceful.
If i said it was halfhearted i would be kind, But i,m not.
To me it was who cares defending.

PTD - Alan Murray had a playing career at Boro, York,Doncaster and Brentford.he then came to Pools in admin/commercial office and took over to everybody’s surprise when Cyril took I’ll instead of the then coach Pop Robson. On getting the push at Pools he had a short spell at Darlington where he was sacked again. After that he had a good life following his mate Graham Souness around as a coach.

Telling you that hammering Raj day in and day out could get the club and or the bunker in a sticky is not defending Raj. Saying he is all we have is not defending Raj. I was defending the Bunker mainly. Just because I don't attack the owner doesn't mean I agree with him. I don't see the point. You are in the group that think that if you're not against you must be for. I don't work like that There's nothing I can do so I don't beat myself up over it. I am amazed that we managed to stave off at least warning threats aimed at the bunker.. I have not defended any bad performances on the pitch and there have been plenty of them. I think hammering people on and off the pitch is not generally productive. Do you think the constant abuse Raj has got has made him a better owner. Or the same with a player.
Did I defend Askey when he was freely admitting he couldn't control his players. I questioned that whereas you defended him by blaming Raj.
If I'm such an avid defender maybe I should get a shirt eh.
Actually I wasn't going to say this but I have been asked who you are and I batted the question away, so you can add yourself to your long list of who and what I defend.
You have to remember that I have two hats on here, one that speaks for myself and the other that looks after the bunker and ALL it's members including you.
As for your apology, I readily accept it on behalf of the hopers wanting a bit of sunshine.

Glad you agree, never say die and all that. Hope springs eternal as they say.

If raj wants my phone number you can gladly pass it onto him.

Though Wealdstone do have games in hand, might be a problem.

no matter how we do our league position will certainly look interesting once these sides play catch up. cannot see em losing all their games.

I wouldn't know where to start with that one, or even be willing to try.
I have a funny feeling that somehow you wouldn't be welcomed with open arms.
However, as usual, I would defend you.

I think we would get on like a house on fire. I can see us chatting about the way forward in front of his log fire now. He be busy this week, but if he wants to get down to business next week he is more than welcome to give me a buzz

Your medication needs changing.

KP is serving a ban hence being in the stand. he will be in the dugout Saturday

Think Mancini only played 5/6 games before being injured

Mancini is who one could have been brought off in the second half as he was having little impact and I’d have liked him kept for Saturday.

When fully fit with better players around him is the Future.

Think we need to get our good start into perspective a bit, we were 3 down at barnet, Gateshead came and totally outplayed us, but we stuck in and somehow got a last min winner. Then we beat maidenhead who were struggling, we beat a southend team at the time in total dissaray and Fylde who were bottom, so we were extremely fortunate with the fixture list, we had mancini playing out of his skin and we had the fans right behind us, we played well at times but i think the first few games sometimes arent a true reflection.

Of course it's a true reflection the results are what they, although it's unsurprising that you could attempt to put a negative spin on such a good run.
Also, without the injuries against stand out side Chesterfield we were matching them if not the more likely to win at their place.
The Gateshead game was against 10 men btw and although they had loads of possession they created virtually nothing in terms of goal scoring opportunities as the defending after the sending off was outstanding.
Regardless of your denigrating the start we had as a team, there can be no denying that the players named above have had a massive drop in form.

No its not a negative, we had a good run for 5 or 6 games but our bad run has lasted 25 games, that sort of shows how good we are. The players that started got off to a good start against poorer opposition, injuries put a cropper on that but because we got off to a good start no denying it, ive said that myself many times, it doesnt mean to say it would of continued, the defence would of put pay to that.

Facts are though fylde were bottom for a while, southend were in a right mess, and most teams at some stage in a season have a run even poor teams, we had ours at the start.

No doubting injuries have massively affected us, but some of those injuries are back now Crawford, mancini etc and we still look worse than bad.

As you keep telling us a season lasts for 44 games not 6 games at the start of the season.