Is he the messiah or a very naughty boy....or somewhere in between?

Pro's

Got the team up for it and got some wins on the board when a relegation battle looked likely
Got senior players like Cooke and Ferguson playing better
Team buying into what he says, while we havent been great every game the effort is always there
Not afraid to change things when its not working
Generally realistic in interviews and recognizes when the oppo are a relatively good side

Con's

Still no clean sheets and not looking like getting one
Hasnt sorted shitshow in midfield (tho Aygemang signing suggests he recognizes it)
Hasnt sorted out utter clown show in goal
The fact we seem to struggle first half andf have to change it suggests he isnt getting initial selections right
Signings generally hits and misses though thats understanable this time of the season

Overall

next season is huge with the deadwood off teh wages, sadly am not convinced he will get backed fully by Raj, or be good enough to compensate for that, hopefully wrong, as next season really is pivotal

The guy saved us with that run but like all the previous managers since Challinor he will be fighting for his job before the years out. On a hiding to nothing.

looking at the table another 7 or 8 points needed for safety

Agree. Not entirely confident, I must say.

In Super Kev I trust as long as Raj keeps backing him. Like someone posted on another thread KP will not hang around if the budget is not good enough to build a successful team.

Maybe we should have went for Brown then, who’s working with what he inherited. Then again he’s not pulling up any trees……or is he

The bloke hates Pools and that is a fact mate.

And that’s a fact cos you know for a fact

Last year this year it was in Askey we Trust

A few defeats and fans are questioning Phillips, really I don't understand why. Today proves Onariase and Lacey are crap along with Dixson (who I have defended this season) but after today. No thanks..

In my opinion, Midtable will be successful after the Winter we've had under Askey.

Raj needs to back Phillips big time in the close season to invest properly in players.

It’s telling that we signed a couple of good solid pro’s in Parks & Waterfall,now we’ve two kids in Aygemang & the Derby lad we can sign a couple of decent okayed & that’s it.
But,after Grey starts getting goals playing up front,why the hell was he stuck out on the wing today?

Your user name is obviously an complete oxymoron

Some folk on here are so ‘delicate’ …with the childish expectation of the average seven year old that you have to win every game or your cack…takes me back to the B team in the juniors…if you can’t cope with the odd defeat now and then it’s probably a sign that watching any sport is not for you, maybe try knitting, although if a stitch was dropped a tantrum would probably follow.
In a hundred years time yer won’t give a shit ..as my Chief engineer frequently told me back in the day.

It’s just giving an opinion of any of us genuinely were that delicate we wouldn’t be supporting pools

I do have an expectation that we are at least a league club based on my years supporting the team though so I do get pissed off when we are struggling a league below that against much smaller teams…no we don’t have a right to beat them but the fact we aren’t would suggest we are being badly run.
Maybe we were spoilt a little in the IOR years but the fact we aren’t even a league club anymore and don’t look
Like being one is enough to leave a lot of fans short of patience with some of the shit being served up

I’m loyal to the club, not to players/managers who have been here 5 minutes I judge them on what I see and I whether or not they are helping the club

What gets people's back up is the way you go all out attack on the team and manager when we lose a game. FFS it's been a bad season but the club are doing everything they can to turn things around and your negativity is definitely not helping. If you really are LOYAL then bloody well show it now and again. We all get frustrated especially in recent times but try either being positive or calm down a little its not all negative.

It hasn’t been ‘a bad season’ it’s been 2 and a half years of self inflicted shite, and I would question whether the entire club is going ‘all out’ to rectify it.

Yes my patience is fairly thin, for close to 40 years i supported a league club until a conman almost made it fold (coxall) the club worked there arse off to get back in the league (and Raj deserves a lot of credit for that) before squandering it all
With a series of unbelievably stupid decisions, and now we are back in the shit so no a couple of wins from a new manager doesn’t reverse 2 + years of fuckwittery

Well the patience of all supporters has been fully tested over the past years and I have followed the club for over 50 years. I am sure you do want the club to progress like all of us supporters but I don't believe the constant criticism is helping. Maybe take a leaf out of KPG book he openly criticised the club like I did but is now being positive and at least giving the manager & team his backing. Every single supporter is totally entitled to an opinion but let's all try to keep it sensible.

I thought kpg was taking the piss to be honest

I want to be positive and will praise when they do well, the nightmare scenario tho is people think everything is fine after a couple of wins then everyone is surprised when things don’t get better next year

After turning down an offer I still think Raj owes the fans a concrete statement of intent around the ambition for next year backed up with funding

KP like Askey after a great run has been unlucky with injuries, the 2 centre backs who have made a big difference, one was ill and couldn’t play today, the other one was substituted through injury. The difference is both centre backs are short term and should be fit for the next game whereas Askey lost Dodds for the season and Mancini still isn’t match fit,

Spot on Jamie.
We were playing the 2nd in the league and they didn’t get there by being mugs….we had injury worries as it turns out…..I’ve been watching football long enough to know shit happens, the measure of the fan is how you cope with defeat not how you celebrate victory, that’s easy.

The term ‘loyal fan’ to me always represent those well meaning but gullible die hards who are so eye wateringly optimistic they think Glenn Miller’s plane is just delayed and believe 101% in their club, so much so it’s an obsession that clouds their judgement.
They never pull the club down or criticise it even when it needs criticising.
So change your name to …’Sympathetic but disappointed Poolie’…or something similar……..a mouthful , but more descriptive of your viewpoint.
Happy to help.

an who was to say even challinor would not have gone the way of the others if he had a bad run after he left. its always the manager in todays world and never the players, or owners or fans overexpectations of the team. give KP to the end of next season and not a day earlier to judge him. only a despirate fool or someone with high expectations of their own ability would take the hot seat at the vic with its own fitted revolving door.

fans today just cannot except defeat at pools and every other club in the league. at least we are not one of the premier league big boys where a defeat is a national disaster of a magnitude an earthwake would cause. its supposed to be 90 odd minutes of relaxation from the real world and not the opposite.

Challinor was about to hit the slippery slope, couldnt win away, turning to players like fondop. No manager will survive here now for very long.

Im afraid some get over excited with whats happened on the pitch for a couple. of weeks but dont see the picture of the last 2 and a half year. Dont get me wrong even i was fooled for a week or two that things were going to change, better standard of players but two weeks later we are bringing back or getting in bang average players again, its deja vu with last season sign a great player in february but then start filling the team with averageness at best. Think the summer is massive now i dont hold much hope but who knows we may go out and actually sign some quality players, otherwise we might as well write of next season too.

I think we can all accept defeat if we didnt we wouldnt be getting nearly 5000 to watch garbage most weeks, what fans cant get over is how piss poor and weak we are at times in defeat against the solihulls and barnets and many other clubs, at times we dont even look like we should be in the same league as them i think thats hard to take. The sad facts are we are now light years away from the morcambes accringtons and crawleys and until we get back to the football league or even be able to top the gatesheads in this league fans are always going to be hyper critical and rightly so. Where are our standards? Once we start accepting whats dished up we will be here for the next 20 years.

we are getting the bang or under average now because of the time it now is. there are only those left. teams are not going to loan us the type of player we want as they might need them themselves in the run in. At the moment most teams have outside chances of the play offs or relegation and with so many clubs having their injury problems and the league forcing squad numbers on efl teams we are just getting whats left.

That might be the case but whats the excuse for the last 2 and a half year? What will be the excuse for this summer? Because come september when the optimism of a new season has gone again we will still be in the same position. Their is something massively wrong not only with the amount of injuries we have, but the standard of our signings, when are we actually going to sort this out? Askey gave us a new manager boumce, phillips has what worries me is it never lasts for long.

The facts are that Hartley was an unmitigated disaster who not only f*cked us over with his signings while he was here but also for 2 years until contracts run out. I doubt many clubs at our level or even div 2 would have been financially capable of paying off all those contracts and starting again.
KP has been here 5 minutes amd it was always unlikely we'd win every game under him as he's s it's still not his side. What he has shown, is that when he has his best players available we can play fast attacking football, when we have 1 or 2 missing the replacements available are not up to it. Yesterday we were simply overpowered by physicality something that's happened too many times over too many years. We don't have the strength in the middle of the park and out wide to compete against the known quantities like Barnet, let's see what changes KP makes when he has a summer of wheeling and dealing and a pre-season then give him a decent period next season before declaring him another dud.

A sentence of praise when we win and a catalogue of complaints when we lose.

If you're writing the summer and next season off already by asking what the excuses will be then I'd seriously be asking why you support Pools at all.

No ..YOU mate are loyal to your T.V set and your keyboard.
Do you realise how many posts and threads you have put up on here since yesterday?
Ridiculous.
As well as your comical footie knowledge and appreciation, which i must admit always gives me the giggles, you clearly must lead a very sad life matey.
Why not take a breather and have a day off eh?
And get yourself to a game occasionally.. it might help you understand things a bit more.
Maybe.

Im not writing the summer off im saying the playing squad needs serious investment in it or we might as well write it off then.

Jumping to conclusions no one is saying he is a dud, but if we keep going along the same old method of filling the team with not good enough loans or a midfield that cant cope, it will be the same end result as all the other previous managers.

That might be because a lot of fans have come to expect this team cant produce the goods for long. You just have to look at the state of our midfield and keeper to realise bad results and performances are just around the corner, but credit where credits due they pulled us out the mire for a few weeks there.

Every other manager has had an assistant with Sweeney also helping out KP hasn’t got an assistant, is Sweeney the answer as an assistant. Nice fella and a loyal servant to Pools, should he take a step back and allow KP to bring in his own assistant ?

Not so sure its the defeat Snowy, But the manner of the defeat.
You and me both and many others on here grew up understanding defeats
And in those times the players were not good enough, Maybe nowts changed.

Billy look back at your own posts and you're predicting after the optimism we'll be back in the same position and looking for excuses! I'd say that's writing us off wouldn't you?

especially if KP wants one. mind you it didn,t work too well with hartley and his one where sweens seemed to be pushed into the background. Thing is we do not really know how good or bad sweeney is at his job and because he has seemed to been around the club forever might not be the answer to that question.

Look back at my post unless serious investment is put into the squad. Which i think you might agree is probobly needed to change things. If it isnt then yes right it off because we are going nowhere without it. Pep guardiola couldnt do much with most of these players.

We cant forever blame Hartley since he has gone we have had half decent players and about 50 bad ones, most of his players have gone now. Its time to move on from his disaster of which many backed his decisions on here, some were going on like we were signing class players, not scottish has beens out on loan at their championship level

Beside the point actually, there’s an imbalance win and you they get a pat on the head , end of,
Lose and the Gods of Hellfire are released as the chariot of wrath descends on their failure to succeed and fed the beast of greedy desire…I should have been a Welsh preacher, but luckily I have no Welsh DNA.

When your 30 to 40 points behind the league leaders in the national league i guess they got to take it on the chin and expect backlash when they meakley lose 2 on the bounce. Just wait till they bump into a gateshead side who are full of movement im not sure our midfield will know what day it is.

Billy there's a clear statement from you that we'll be in the same boat next season after the optimism is gone, nothing at all about investment, a simple prediction that nothing will change this summer or next season. So I'd ask again, why bother?
Hartleys legacy is that even though most of his 2 year contracted players aren't getting a game, we're still paying them - even the loaned out of es. And as I said we like most other clubs can't afford to have 2 full squads, one of misfits running their contracts down and one to actually play games. Until that is addressed were hamstrung June 30th being freedom day.
As for investment, one of the bigger spending clubs in this league with millions invested with a manager with a decent track record at higher levels, are currently in the bottom 4.

Why bother? in the hope that our Chairman has a change of strategy backs the manager with proven players rather than players who end up coming in and dissapearing to lower level teams. One of the bigger spending clubs is also 20 points clear at the top of the league. The other bigger spending clubs are now sat at the top of league 2. Now we know we aint getting investment like that anytime soon, but what we have been doing clearly aint working and hasnt worked for nearly 3 seasons.

If he doesnt back Philips in the summer and not 20 lads no one wants, thats not backing, we need quality or we will sit here next year in the same predicament probobly after another 2 managers have gone

We don't know what will happen in the summer so my stance is wait and see.
I wish you would go and buy Raj out because I for one would have a field day putting you under scrutiny. A bit of a fantasy because you need a bit more than a couple of halfpennies to scratch your arse with.

When i do im going to tell you lot im selling up to keep you off my back, im going to make out no one is interested in buying me out even though the mighty Rochdale takes about 2 days to find a buyer. Im going to sign 40 players they might end up going to spenny after but it will fool a few. When ive paid myself off with the football league money im going to do one.

Now I know why you haven't got two halfpennies to scratch your arse with.

Billy Out, Billy Out, Billy Out……

Kevin Phillips has kept us up. After a great start, Askey was taking us into a relegation fight.

Now we only need one win and a couple of draws to guarantee safety, in what is a competitive bottom half of the table this season.

The issue Phillips has is the impact he had was immediate and had fans (me included) dreaming of playoffs.

He achieved what he was employed to do potentially 'too quickly' from an expectation point of view.

Whether it was Phillips or Monks we signed Parkes, Waterfall, Dickenson, Kahn & Senior which gave us a solid CB pairing and some wide players we were missing.

Dickenson isn't fit and hasn't been interested in working hard, Seniors 1 month loan was up and the other 3 are injured. The new players, added to the existing squad gave us belief we could beat anyone, without them our squad is poor.

Phillips has exceeded expectations. The three newer loanees who started yesterday aren't experienced enough to fill in for the ones they are replacing.

The question mark on what Phillips can achieve depends on whether Raj is willing to sanction the signings of the calibre of Waterfall & Parkes for next season, as we need another 4-5 on top of:

Dodds
Waterfall
Parkes
Crawford
Mancini
Cooke
Grey
Umerah
Mani D

Lets start to tie down key players who are out of contract and sign players in key positions we are lacking.

one thing is that if we had not lost against a promotion candidate this thread would never have started anyway. KP is no better or worse a manager than he was at kick off time so why wasn,t this started mid week and not another knee jerk reaction to another defeat. Good job we and our ancestors never always felt like this as goodness knows how many managers we would have employed in our long mostly unsuccesful history. Those who cannot take defeats and bad performances would be better to pack it all in, buy a good expensive armchair with the money they save and just watch todays most successful side on the box.