The Poolie Bunker

I know it's only 5 games, but there's absolutely no evidence on tonight's showing that Pools have the makings of a play-off side.

It's the third game running where we have been out-muscled and outplayed all over the pitch by bog standard National League sides.

Yes, we had a few shots on target and with the rub of the green might have scored one, but without Merrick in goal, how many would we have let in? 3? 4?

Recruitment has been poor overall, and nobody can pretend that the coaching looks up to snuff. Some of the players are already starting to look lost. Can anybody see how we snap out of this?

It says it all that Tait Trusty, a kid who we had on loan last season, looked head and shoulders better than any of our midfielders. And obviously, we signed the wrong Hugill

Anything less than a win on Saturday and it's got to be game over for the current set up.

Bloody shame that Dave Challinor was only in the commentary box tonight!

Yeah. Landon puts his hand in his pocket, gets in a couple of midfielders, and if Clark doesn’t turn it around in the next 5/6 games admits he made a mistake and gets rid of him.

The goalkeeper looks like the best we’ve had in years, Kougan and McNally are a solid pair of CBs, and we’ve got 2 match winners in Nolan and Harris. But that means nothing if you’ve got 3 Sunday league level midfielders.

If we had even 1 forward thinking midfielder things would look a whole lot better.

Good point about having Merrick in goal because on last nights showing we could have been 3-0 down at half time which shows his excellence as a keeper.
The midfield is a defensive midfield, so defensive in fact that once it has to go on the offensive it’s lost…..it’s a stop em at all costs defence, but that’s the sum total of its capability and a poor reflection on the the summer recruitment if the previous seasons glaring failure failing…our biggest in the squad had been found wanting two seasons earlier than this…and is rolled out again this season with apparently the same result.
We are going nowhere with our midfield as it is.