Just stayed up last season sending us down, now looking like they're heading to Wembley in the playoffs.

Another shitty club ran by fools who have managed to outdo us

It's not to hard to do nowadays.

You enter a new season in reality with a defeatist attitude seasoned with a generous helping of self pity and spite.
You demand excellence, but begrudge praise ….even the few times it’s warranted.
Some of us realise it doesn’t work out like that in reality, even under IOR we underachieved…….I suspect some people use football as a substitute for frustrations in their life, personally I just take it as it sails by and avoid an ulcer,.
It’s one thing to demand others to perform as players or managers, owners etc etc etc …but the chip on the shoulder grumbling bundle of joy on the terrace is a demanding toddler in reality who finds coping hard…if anyone going into football as a supporter couldn’t cope with not winning they should take up watching table tennis or Conkers…..
It’s only the fountain of self pity and wronged pride that keeps me going on here,…. I lost that self pity thank fuck as a teenager back in the early seventies.
Maybe I had harder task masters to worry about at the time.

Do ya fancy a game of ping pong.
Give ya 20 start.

Nah cos it’s boring as feck……I stood on the ball in Carlton Camp in the juniors and got a clip off the teacher…..it was the frustration.
First lesson in life…if I couldn’t cope with table tennis, look for something else, I looked for something else…Ginger frustration can lead to bad things.

if they are ran by fools then how are we being run. i,d like pools then to become a shitty club run by fools if we had one foot in a league 2 play off final.

The modern game for you - one minute they are a goal at home to us away from being relegated. A whole season later they are potentially going up. Their divvy yanky owners have not exactly splashed the cash like a Wrexham or Stockport either tbh. Seemed to of just got the team playing well - more down to the manager for me

Reminds me of that other revolving door moment in 2017 when Newport stayed up by the skin of their teeth on the last day of the season. Pools went down and nearly went bust; Newport signed Almond off us and had some great FA cup runs as well as reaching the play-offs twice. In all honesty Pools were screwed then even if we'd stayed up and Newport had gone down down.

If we'd pipped Crawley last season and stayed up you'd have to be a fantasist to imagine we wouldn't have been down among the League 2 dead men again this season.

it all just makes me wonder what the real d ifferences between us and newport and crawley are. we all have our theories but nothing to really back them up.

Wise recruitment is the key with a shrewd man manager, Don,t have to spend a fortune.
Does help if you have some funds though.

Crawley...... i despair.

money does help but some have failed even when they have had it. players as someone previously said are just contractors on an agreed wage and length of it. they have no real love for the club over any other unless they were born and bred locally which seems out of fashion across the whole of football.

The whole winning culture and making the home ground a fortress etc etc... some managers can come in and install an absolute regiment of battle hardened marines into a crop of half decent players for what ever level they are playing at. Add to that a few good loan players and a striker who decides to have the season of his life and you have every recipe for success. DC did it here.. i dont want to go over old ground and repeat his name but he took a bang average bunch of players - added a formidable striker and the rests history as we know ! Money in the game at this level probably is as effective as it is as the very top, if not more given we need cash to not only sign good players but to keep the club going as we definitely dont have the sponsors the bigger clubs get or tv cash for that matter ! But its how you spend it... ala York City last season

you mention sponsors. fans rarely think of them and its always the owners that get the publicity. a sponsors lounge full of people dipping into their pockets could make a big difference to us. fans sponsor their club every week by turning up, buying draw tickets an using the clubs facilities to the best of what they can afford. getting more involved at the club with far more cash than we have to do more is a way forward.

If Crawley can do it anyone can, yet next season we will still have the same people, telling us why its acceptable to be struggling in non league.

Crawley are owned by Wagmi, that American cryptocurrency outfit who made themselves a bit of a laughing stock last season with their antics. All the same, they backed new manager Scott Lindsey by splashing the cash in the January transfer window and that kept them up. This season they've stuck with Lindsey as manager and continued investing in the side. A winning formula for any club

Doesn't matter what anyone thinks is acceptable, shouting its not and demanding Raj spends more money is as futile as Canute trying to stop the tide coming in.
All we can do is keep hoping for better times, same as most other football supporters really.

Just don't get this demand malarkey.
2 disaster seasons and expecting better.
Is that demanding!?

It's a matter of opinion Kev and like it or not the only opinion that controls what is going to happen belongs to Raj. Is he going to push the boat out and give the fans what they crave or is he going to keep the club ticking over as he puts it.
It won't be long before we find out.
Place yer bets folks the table is open.

Im hoping to not see the Prestige group as our main sponsor next season - if indeed Raj does give the club money through this shirt sponsor and it not just a benefit to him in other avenues then fair be it but i highly doubt it. We do need to get the sponsorship thing absolutely bang on ! and a new shirt sponsor giving us some extra cash would be ideal ! Suit Direct i am not too sure if our deal with them is now done and new naming rights will be coming to the Vic once again ? All this extra cash can be the difference. There is a lot of wealthy people in this town and its a damn shame not more of them are involved in the football club !

Did the Prestige Group put any money into Pools or was it a tax incentive for them, plenty of wealthy people in the town but unfortunately no allegiance to Pools nor with money to burn. Musgrave is probably one of the wealthiest from the town, did he not make a tentative approach to buy Pools ?

Or was he approached…?
Whatever it was, the image of a deserted desert cowboy ghost town with doors creaking in the wind and tumbleweeds rolling through sums the situation nicely.

again its the amount of actual cash sponsors put in. as for wealthy people in the area i doubt any bought into their club at the outset or took em over at the first opportunity. i,d guess right now the ones who have done this were unknown individuals to most fans nowadays.

Looked a quality team last night. Some of the football they played was light years ahead of us.

MK Dons were dreadful in both games but more especially last night.
They had a mountain to climb at KO last night but started by giving another goal away which nullified any slight chance of overturning the deficit.
What impressed me with Crawley is their creation and use of space and the speed and desire to get players forward into dangerous areas.
Their free flowing football was good to watch but after a few minutes they were effectively 4-0 up and so could play without restraint. That is a very good situation to be in.
Good on them.
Once again an example of the age old adage that football is a team game.
Play as a team, function as a team, think as a team and you get the rewards as a team.
Over to you Mr Sarll.

Exactly, when we played them they stuck to their game plan and our 11 didn't show up or even graft for each other.

Yeah getting early goal probobly helped them look better, but ive never seen a team play so well over two legs in a play off game some of the passing and movement was way above league 2 standard.

Crawley totally out played them both legs, Scintillating football like i,ve not seen for some time.
Seemed like the players played with freedom. Good luck to them.

yes and look at their manager and many of their signings. they had a lot in common with each other for being unwanted by other clubs before they arrived there. a lot of togetherness down there which we should be trying to replicate.

The guy that scored the hat trick last night when he was at Harrogate was in talks to come to pools, talks broke down he went to Crawley and has scored 22 goals this season and out of contract in June ??

there would have been no guarentee he,d have scored 22 for us this season or many d doing the same. for crawley. same every time we miss out on a player and they do well somewhere else it would be a certainty they,d do the same with us with different players around them.

Crawleys best player,can’t remember his name,was released by Rochdale last year.
Just shows you.

Under Singh our shirt sponsors were as follows :-

Darlington Building Society (last season of their deal)
The Morrit hotel (won a raffle for a one season sponsor)
Prestige (because nobody else was interested)

With the raffle, I think about 6 companies paid. £1k each to have a chance to win, the losers got runners up deals.

One things Raj was shit at while chairman for us, was attracting sponsors who paid decent money for the privilege.

Sounds correct Loan Star.

Wouldn't know, for one I don't know what the going rate for NL sponsorship deals is, and I don't know what any of the sponsors have stumped up. I suspect that none of us on here know either too.

Danilo Orsi was deemed surplus to requirement here at Grimsby. He didn't get much game time so we sold him to Crawley for a nominal fee, whatever that is. He then scores over 20 goals and has helped take them from the lower reaches to the play offs.

Bad decisions are not only made at Hartlepool, we can manage them just as well as you lot can!

Too true mate, what transforms a player from an arthritic cart horse at one club and then they become a hero at another club.

fans though never forget the bad decisions regarding players but quickly forget the good signings as if thats just par for the course and expected. Post something negative about the club and it will surely get more views and comments than something positive will get. not a theory but a proven fact by many youtubers who get better number of views for negatives than positives.

Well 2 positives at the club last season were the ticketing and scanning arrangements. Nowhere near perfect but a massive improvement.
The Youth system seems to be bearing fruit with 4 coming through the ranks appearing in the last home game of the season. Got to be encouraging for the future.

totally agree on both. i,d hate to go back to cash at the turnstiles with long waits due to fans never having the right money and those giving out the change were not trained by lidl or aldi.

Yep a strange one, Some cannot get going and then no stopping them else where.

Apparently he couldn't settle, he's from down south. The North Sea air was too much for him!

‘Bracing’ comes to mind.

just thinking about how crawley and their fans will feel after storming into the final but end up losing it. still cannot forget cardiff and at the end of the day i wished we had finished mid table that season as the whole season went down the pan in one single game and the nasty taste it left in my mouth at the end. didn,t go to bristol due to that as once was bad enough going through all that and i didn,t want to repeat it.

Promoted to Div 1

Deserved it!

Only 3 players left from when we played them.

Best team won- as much as it pains me to say it.
The Crawley keeper is an absolute monster!

Just as well they had VAR today as that dive the Crewe player took was very convincing on first viewing. That said had we had VAR at Cardiff, no doubt they'd still have given the penalty and sending off

It also came out pre-match that apart from players team management and coaches the club only has FIVE full time employees.!!!!

Remarkable achievement.
Sounds like organised Ambition.
Well done.
Maybe inspiration to a few other clubs who lack self belief.
Never surrender and always give 100%.
UTP.