The Poolie Bunker

First post in a while, buzzing we got rid of raj, well i think we have anyway.

So then we get new hope and optimism and since then its all been a bit flat a right damp squib. When one of the first things we did with a new chairman is bring back an ex player who was on his way out a few year ago it does set of red flags warnings etc that, not only will money not be splashed but were still going down our failed old routes.

But then you think to yourself we have to give this guy time to sort some of the mess out at the club. What is it 3 months or so? What on earth has been sorted? Virtually nothing. We have a manager boring the living daylights out of fans, barring the odd game, a failed guy in charge of recruitment still sat in the hot seat, still picking out duffs, an ex player who joined the coaching staff who failed miserably at whitby and still searching in the bargain basements for players. I might be wrong but werent we going for the play offs? If this is going for it then i dread to think when we down tools.

I must say my excitement for a new season, season ticket was 100 percent going to be puchased 3 months ago is now on the wane. I want to see developments, proper signings, losers binned from the club and ambition, yes we deserve some. This last few months have been very raj esque and if after having giving pelters to him for yearsi feel its also fair to start questioning what the hell are we actually doing now also.

Now is the time to see improvement, quality signings not missing out on national north players these really arent good signs for things to come. I hope im wrong but im starting to thing we are all going to be very dissapointed come the start of a new ssason.

Welcome back Billy!

Think you make some fair points, re the team. However I think it's still too early to judge the new Chief.

It's been disappointing the last few games- every time we get to with in touching distance of the play offs, we implode the game after. Think it's a mentality thing as much as anything. The games until the end of the season are pretty much a free hit now- if Fev wants the job next season this is his audition for both him and the squad to get their collective shit together. To be fair, both Halifax and SARFend are no great shakes either, and are just as poor as we are, in terms of consistency- which has further magnified the fans frustration with the team. We get up for the big clubs but tend to drop our levels to the level of the opposition, making every game feel like a grind.

This summer is the real time when we should start to see significant changes taking place both structurally in the club, on the stadium/ pitch and also with the playing staff. The retained list and the type of players we are then competing to bring into revitalise the squad will indicate the level of ambition the new set up has, in the short term

I do think that the likes of Rusty Lee, Joe Monks, Pearson (if he's still lurking like a stubborn turd that refuses to flush) Lenny and Raj's other wingmen need to be axed ASAP as they are responsible in large part for the general malaise around the place.

I've said on other threads we need the likes of Russ Green back as CEO.
I'd have a Director of Football- as we need a football identity, regardless of who the manager is. This is the way we play and these are the type of players we'll recruit. Again somebody that knows the club and the fanbase -Higgy/ Chris Turner/ Danny Wilson/ Gordon Watson type.
I have Simmo back from Spenny as Media mogul - again he knows the job, what's required and he's excellent at it.

I get the impression that Landon is serious about this venture- why would he bother , if he didn't think he could make a significant impact in the medium to long term, similar to what the Hollywood boys have done in Wales. He also hasn't done a Gorgeous George Reynolds promising us the Premier League in 5 years, gold taps and heskulators, which has got to be a good thing.

As difficult as it feels, I think patience and keeping our collective powder dry is what we need to do at the current time. We have rid ourselves;of the Rajanator, fresh investment into club which feels genuine (unlike Coxberg) and I believe that good times are on the horizon. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day! The future is bright- the future is Blue and White!

So you managed to row to Australia ….took your time getting back on here.

I didn’t expect anything till the end of the season.
Sounds like the sort of bloke who weighs things up and quietly arrives at his own conclusions and sees things through his own eyes and doesn’t walk in and kick the door in like some clowns do.
If he’d came in at the start of the season I’d be alarmed, but this season has been a cruise to nowhere and in many ways is the perfect from his viewpoint to assess the full business from top to bottom.
Get the finances sorted first, a football club is built on its finances, the rest follows as in all businesses.
I’ll expect something to start in earnest towards the very end of the season….even IOR jumped straight in.
It’s frustrating in a way, but no one was gonna come in spraying money about at the end of a season, get the lay of the land.

One major change is that had Raj still been here I reckon he'd have sacked Fev by now.
Fevs audition must surely be over, we can't possibly consider him for the managers job next season?
This has in fact been a golden opportunity to get a play off spot and we've blown it due to ultra cautious tactics not lack of ability imo, and if Fev recognised that we didn't have the personnel to play 2bup top then why haven't we brought someone in to help out even loanees?

fevs should never have been given the job till the end of the season. just there to keep the seat warm for his full time successor. then the question again would be who would that be. always think the end of the season is the worst time to change a manager especially once the retained list is out giving them no chance to bin or keep who they want. as for the play offs i feel its not the time yet for them or promotion. too much work for LS to do just to get the club run correctly for league football. possibly his slower approach is not appreciated by some but might help him to see the bigger picture even with the bullshitting failures giving there opinions he might actually believe on day one.

Agree 100%, the ideal opportunity is with a new manager in …but given he’s new to the game he might be being cautious…but don’t be too cautious, we’re near the time we had better have some plans finalised.Starting in the close season is never a good idea.

even hartley might have been able to sign better scottish hero,s if he had been given the job earlier instead of being stuck with what was still available. more likely its the club being too over cautious than managers at times like this.

I don't have so much of a problem with Fevs being around until the end of the season - so long as his replacement gets to look at the squad before the end of the season and he has input into the retained list. Getting rid of Fevs would be just another knee jerk reaction, continuing the clubs bad reputation for firings. So, hoping that the the Chairman is quietly looking at things, lets stop the merry go round and be patient.
Mind, sad to see that 'Our Rep' is still in post....

How is paying a fee for a young talented player shopping in the bargain basement? We’ve paid for one player and have bid for another and it’s been 3 months in a dead rubber season, how many players did we spent actual money on under Raj? In 8 years. I think people also forget arguably our best player was signed from the national league north and the best player in the league was in the national league north at 27. Signing players with a reputation in the EFL hasn’t exactly worked out very well for us recently. I’d also rather an owner who takes his time with decisions and has abit of patience rather then the shite we had to put up with before, might just be me though. I don’t rate Featherstone as a manager and don’t think he should be here next season but sacking him now does absolutely fuck all for us.

Is that you Raj!

Pointless

Welcome back Billy.
You have every right to be concerned.
This May to Summer will lay down were we going to be longish term.

For me either goes 2 ways.
Let's hope the upwards way.

Lets see we're we are this time next year even though it's slightly dissapointing that this seasons have fun going for the top7 was a fakeish statement.

UTP.

Got to hope we've got plans and people in place to announce a new manager in place as soon as the season finishes, we've seen the effect of going through the process too late and scraping the dregs for players in a rush just before the new season starts. It rarely works out well.
One concern I have is who LS is getting advice from, with all due respect I sincerely hope it's not LL, Peerson, Jeff Sterling, etc. I don't believe that continuity is necessary when you're continuing with serial losers. A clean sweep is what's required imo.

100%
One bad egg is all it takes to extend this misery.
UTP

Let’s hope Smith has looked at the number of previous Pools managers and asked Singh who recommended them so he doesn’t fall into the same trap. Is LL still at the club because he is not listed as a staff member on the O.S.

its not easy for LS. does he want to stop the manager merry go round at pools and keep fevs as a knee jerk reaction. he cannot change the past though with some managers getting the boot too early only to be replaced with worse. clubs finding the right man for the club is possibly the hardest thing there is or they just fall lucky like we did with challinor.

Agree but Fev appears to be neither competent nor lucky.

just being bloody stubborn and not helping himself due to it. something he might have learned from all his years in the game.

The fans who have entered the Vic this season surely deserve a bit of success for next season even a scrappy scraping into the top 7 on G/D.
Your support has been absolutely outstanding and I'm hoping to join you next season along with Billy n MutleyRules
UTP.

really cheap season tickets might help especially for those who bought one this season as some sort of thank you from the club.

Is that the Garry Liddle who got instant Worshipness for a one off game v Carlisle.

Fans also need a reset.
Maybe 4 wins in a row before future Audilation or just maybe even Promotion.

the thought of promotion fills me with dread. not because of it but how some will treat these players and the bench with hero status. just imagine the scene. one nil down to carlisle at wembley then wham bang goals by campbell and super sub johnson or daly give us the chance of the promised land yet again. rather miss out big style than that.

How was it a dead rubber season, all we needed was to buy quality 1,2 or 3 months ago and we would be sat in the play offs, in fact if we had won 2 home games we would be pretty much in them. First of all since when has our back room staff actually spotted anything remotely talented apart from manni maybe?
wasnt that scarborough lad supposed to be the next best thing? Lets not get fooled about putting bids in, it would of been peanuts with 10 games to go with him going free at the end of the season. We are still chasing basement signings, yts lad,hologhan, southend reserve, york reserve, no ones saying they cant be good for us but its still scraping the dreggs of other teams.

Whats the point in sacking featherstone now? Every point it gives a new manager time to bring in players experiment, find a system, gives him extra time to build something. How many times has a rebuild in the summer worked for us?

Depends who’s doing the rebuild and the extent of the ‘rebuild’.
I’d rather we started now than in the close season and hit the ground running.
A decent manger could assess what he has and wants to keep by watching them play on what’s left of the season.
If no one is prepared to act now, we’ll just have to carry on with this stop start merry go round.

The rebuild should be ongoing right now. Identifying a new manager right now gives him the opportunity to assess what we've got, what he thinks we need, and be involved from the off in the retained list and recruitment.
Quite clearly there's a "jobs for the boys" mentality around the place at the moment - why else bring in the likes of Liddle and Holohan?
Featherstone clearly has no ambitions to win games focussing entirely on clean sheets, he cannot adapt when things are not going out way, is obviously not a motivator, and doesn't give a flying feck about the fans.

who else in this league would have brought in those two anyway. mind you whoever gets the job next will possibly do the same by bringing there mates with them. just need to hope they are of a much better standard. funny thing in football is that mates and even family members of the manager do not give them the extra favours you might expect.

I have no idea what Landon is going to do or how his ownership is going to pan out but, like others, I really hope that things will become clearer come May. I said a couple of months ago I thought there was a massive opportunity to make an instant impact, get the fans buzzing and itching to get behind the new owner and have a right go at the play offs, culminating in a big surge in support and next season's ticket sales. I asked for the fans to be given something to shout about, to get behind if you like and forecasted that they would respond and, to a certain extent, they have. Now it seems to be petering out somewhat with more and more fans wondering what we are going to get from the new ownership. I am the first to stand up and say that Landon will do what he sees fit within his commitment and he is perfectly entitled to do that.
However, if he wants us on his side he has to give us an idea of what we can expect. We want to support him and get behind him and play our part. We are desperate to get involved again and put behind us the disappointments of our recent past. He must see this in the manner that he has been welcomed and treated. He has a fantastic opportunity to get us all UNITED, don't let that opportunity slip through your fingers, Mr Smith.

Not trying to make the play offs this season has probobly already knocked off 500 from next seasons gates unless we show major ambition in the summer. Talks of giving featherstone a new contract will probobly kill any positivity left stone dead.

Featherstone is a dead end.

There was Talk Talk of a play off push.
Nothing concrete in a You can sign players at any time in this division. Ie upgrades

Talk n Hope = Nothing.

Maybe the brakes got slammed on by Smithy when he realised he took on a bigger job than he thought and now realisea the club needs gutting as fast as possible.

Surely this is going on in the background as all can't be revealed while current contracts expire.

Out of the fans hands and what will be will be.
No more false hope.

I never expected a push…simply because we don’t have a manager with that drive and tactical know how to make a go of it, plus some players attitude hovers between hot and cold.
This should have been a time of rebuilding from top to bottom and giving the place a good shake up.
I at least hope that change is being planned, it has to be, because on and off the pitch we are in the doldrums, drifting around in circles.
Featherstone’s departure and the hopeful search for a new manager is being pursued is vital…because there’s no future in the present state of affairs….spring cleaning time is coming round the corner…make good use of it.

When IOR took over they changed the recruitment model for selecting managers with some success.
Got to hope the recruitment model that is being implemented since LS took over includes staff and players and can be as successful.
Got to say that after the new owner said we'd have a real go at reaching the play offs this season and have fun doing it, the jury's out so far because we're doing neither.
The thought that Fev could still be in charge next season will deter many from buying STs whereas actually having a go at winning every game and building momentum would surely encourage more to buy them. It's all about forward planning and we've nothing to lose by going gung ho.

Come on Smithy.

Stop dithering and end this mess.
Rebuild needs to start ASAP.

The ‘dream’s over’ time to get down to work.

Landon. Now is the time to grow those balls.

Well if 4000 Poolies turn up on Monday he will be laffing his bollocks off more than Radgy at our over support.

yes, but what happened last night has nothing to do with monday afternoon. two different games of football and the odds of us losing 7 nil again would be massive. possibly the worst time to go to the vic is the next game after an away win.

3 wins followed by a 7 0 lashing.
Only Pools could produce this outcome.

Frankly I’m puzzled by something by that…when an entire team collapses you have to wonder why.