There will have been some differential probably, yes.

As to how the aggregate wages of the 9 permanent signings released compares with the aggregate wages of the 5 signed so far, I'm honest enough to say I have no idea. Do you? Does any fan?

The bottom line is that if Sarll gets his wish he'll have replaced 9 released players with 9 new ones. Budgets and wages as ever are all speculation and guesswork we'll never know, nor do we have any right to know.

Well it was drummed into us that Hartley spent massive on certain players, probobly nonsense but that was the excuse for us being held back.

Now those players are pretty much gone we got rid of the high wage earners, according to some astronomical numbers for 1 or 2 of them and you bring 5 in from the likes of Halifax, a guy thats played twice for Cheltenham, Fylde and the likes of Crawley you would like to think their is plenty more to come? Lets be honest we are still nowhere near strong enough no strength in depth.

We aren't strong enough for 46 games, but we don't need to be.

We need to be prepared for Yeovil and the remaining August games.

I hope not having another keeper does not cost us. Otherwise I am confident we can win games in August with the current squad.

Anybody with an ounce of sense knows, You MUST have decent cover.
Snarll knows that more than most.

I've never said anywhere that we are. I'm convinced Pools have got a better core of 13-14 players than at the start of that season and we should make another fast start, but it won't be enough get us through to next May.

Then again, there's no transfer windows in the National League. ITtmight all come down to how many injuries we pick up. Under Challinor we were pretty lucky in that regard whereas last season was a disaster.

Should also remember we weren't miles adrift of the play off places with last year's squad so a marginal improvement would probably be enough to make play offs at least. The new arrivals and system of play will hopefully make the difference, at least I wouldn't expect Sarll to sit on 1 goal leads and end up chucking points away as we did last season. Dissing new players before we've seen them in a league game is ridiculous from our own fans imo.

Nobody is dissing them, nobody knows if they are any better than last seasons shower though, its pretty ridiculous to claim they are better before we see them at league games, we all hope and think they will be but until they do it on the pitch no one knows.

We already know Waterfall and Parkes are a big upgrade on Manny O, Pruti or Lacey, the centre backs Pools started with last season. Gonna stick my neck out and suggest Campbell is better than Wreh too

You can sit on the fence about the 3 new midfielders till we play Yeovil if you like. One big memory of last season is that opposition midfielders had the freedom of the park against us.

Our midfield has been missing in action for years.

People have been blindly optimistic about every managers signings and they've turned out to be a mixed bag. Well we've got the blind optimism again this year so no change there. Let's hope the usual disappointment doesn't follow.

Would think the vast majority of football fans are currently full of optimism for the season ahead. Most will be disappointed before the seasons done.

I don't think being better than any of those players is something to get excited about. I'll take it though, definite improvements.

Regarding W n P.
The Gateshead team mite beg to differ.

again its this depth of the squad thats worrying fans more than the signings themselves. in theory it seems fine for me if we sign another keeper and more time should be spent in finding reasons and acting on them for players picking up non contact or training injuries. hope the saturday morning sick notes are a thing of the past as well. that became another joke.

They also had the freedom of the park against Scarborough so lets just wait on that one. Im convinced they have got to be better but we will only really know when proper footy starts. The defence we all of a sudden seem to rate but they conceded nearly 2 goals a game at the back end of last season, they also were a part of one of our worst results in our history. Hopefully a better midfield will help the defence.

That is the problem some seem to think its ok going into a season with no strength in depth likelyhood is we will have injuries before a ball is kicked and once the season starts within a few games we will be missing a few just the way it seems to go in general nowadays. Who knows strength in depth on the bench might nick us a win at yeovil.

doubt we are unique in all that and if we are then something needs to be looked at and sorted out. still think its the calebre of the players injured last season rather than the injuries themselves. if we had lost wreh and dixon for the season and not dodds and mancini i,m sure the season would have been a better one and askey would still be in a job here.