The Poolie Bunker

A really big one for them as they ‘re now second top and the finishing line is in sight.
Who’s gonna blink, Rochdale or York….?
Wonder how their ticket sales are going for Monday?

if they cannot sell there allocation for this game there fans do not deserve league football back.

Rochdale v York game 46.
Fully expecting York to finish top and Rochdale fail in the play-offs.
As for Pools.
3 3 on Monday.
4700 oversupported crowd.

rochdale could go back to basics with 11 behind the ball to force a goaless draw. something that i have heard happening in todays game.

Rochdale need the points so wont mess about. We are shite at home. If Pools win I wont have seen it coming.

One thing is for sure and that is they won't see me coming until I am fully sure what is coming and then they might have a chance.

The thing is, some absolutely obvious happenings are never forseen. I guess it depends who has their eyes stubbornly shut. I think it could be to do with pattern recognition. Some Poolies on here have noted that unforseen happening occur after Pools have a Saturday with no game. The long journey South phenomenon has also been noted by our fellow contributors who have perceived that Pools always play badly after these travels. Only Featherstone and his staff are oblivious.

I going for Desmond - 2-2
Reid and Caton to score for us
Mani and Rodney to score for them.

After a bit of deliberation, I personally hope York win the league. Proper club with a decent fan base.
Unlike the Dale, who's attendances, are pretty woeful given the season they've had. Also factoring in that they pinched our best player for nowt- I wouldn't shed any tears if they stayed put for another season. With that in mind, hope we can do York a favour and take at least a point.

That said, hope Mani gets a decent reception from the home support. Reckon he'd still be with us if the Rajanator had shuffled off in the summer, instead of Christmas.

Crowd 4852
545 Dale fans bother to show up

Something in my heart tells me he will sit with 10 men behind the ball again not necessarily with the starting 11 against Scunny. I don’t normally like to make scoring predictions but going with a 0-0 and Snowy and Hogan delirious with the tacticts

Delirious with what…there’s nothing there to be delirious about…..just a ‘manager’ who thinks he has the answer, but hasn’t been given the question yet…..and yet convinced himself he’s right.
All very confusing.

been the problem all seasom where due to the players we have on the books who perform the best our games will be tight affairs relying on conceeding less than the opposition and not outscoring them. something that needs to alter at the end of the season without some knee jerk reaction where we need to score 3 just to get a draw.

Hope NF does not blink, Otherwise he will be saying…………………………………………..

If the Rochdale manager had not tried to be clever on a few occasions (tinkering) they would still be top.

It will be us who will be going for the 0-0 draw!!! NF would be over the moon with that.

Well “It would be as good as a win"

Rochdale have sold out their ticket allocation for Monday.

https://rochdaleafc.co.uk/ticket-news-h ... ay-060426/

I think it'll be a decent game. Rochdale will go all out for the 3 points and Pools daren't just shut up shop for 70 minutes at the Vic - the crowd would go mental. Not that it'll be end to end for 90 minutes

To get the fans onside somebody needs to go in hard on one of their players in the first couple of minutes - like Miley did at Scunthorpe. I'm pretty sure Campbell will start, so the poor bugger will be the lightening rod for fan frustrations.

One player we won't be seeing is Mancini - he's only been on the pitch for 74 minutes in the NL all season and hasn't even made the bench since January. Daft that some people were annoyed Pools let him go.

Rochdale by 2 clear goals, Manni to net twice

Aye Mancini was like a firefly, flashes of genius but you needed more than flashes.
We have a team/management who go from one extreme performance to another with no guarantee of who will turn up on the day..

Forget what Rochdale need to do and concentrate on what we need to do - we need to score more than them, simple.
A goalless draw is useless to us, a loss is equally useless, the only thing that is of any use to us is a win - just go for it FFS!!

Rochdale are averaging 2 goals per game so it looks like we’ll need to score twice to get anything out of the game. They will be confident of passing 100pts this afternoon. Featherstone will be well aware of this and set up similar to the Scunthorpe game. I’d rather rake leaves in high winds.

Exactly, what do we gain from shutting them out if we can't score ourselves?
I don't think he'll change his philosophy though, it'll be backs against the walls from the off. Can't see us keeping Mani, Rodney, Henderson quiet for 90 minutes.

mancini is just a wage thief and a waste of talent that some lad would love to possess and make a career in the game. he is not the first and will not be the last.

he is either an advocate of non football or forced upon him by the players available. it would be suicide going out in an attempt to outscore them. at least we have not too many games to go through before this horrible season ends and hopefully we,ll see more attacking football at the vic next season where we spend more time in our opponents half than what we have seen since august. actually now i could not give a toss who wins today and how pools perform.

We outscored them at their place so why not have a go?
I personally think it'd be madness to just keep bodies behind the ball given their attacking prowess.
For me if it's set up for the dull fest again it'll be my last game of the season, maybe start going horse racing instead, at least non-triers are banned in that sport.

but how many teams have come to the vic and done the same leaving with a point or three. how many times have we watched these teams and said i could not watch that every week. fact is more fans are watching this than a few months back which is hard to fathom. surely the new owner bounce is finished by now.

Pools did play aggressively in the away fixture at Rochdale and caught them cold, especially in the first half - so the 'philosophy' isn't always defensive.

That said. Pools had George Evans in goal and the back four for most of the game was Benn-McNally-Kouogun-John, the best defence in the division. And Mani D didn't play!

This time around we've got a dodgy keeper to protect so I expect Hunter and Sheron will start in midfield, unless Hunter has to play in the back 4 again! I'm sure we'll still give it a go in front of our own fans. Like I said, looking forward to it.

I tried horse racing when I was young and fit but the horses always won.

Not a bad performance . A game of chess . We are playing a high press which is quite nice and we have a good shape. They nearly scored in an effort which Evan’s should have dealt better . Sinclair hit a cracking 20 yarder which looked like it was going in but their loaner keeper from Man City turned it around the post . TBA I expected them to be a bit more adventurous . I’m disappointed Caton not playing but Charman done ok . Interesting game rather than thrilling .

Lots of nice passing from pools in defence and midfield . Unfortunately as soon as the ball gets anywhere the box the neat passing stops . So as per the whole season no quality upfront . Mostly we had Reid and Sinclair upfront which when we were attacking wasn’t enough . Defence played well again . Strange tactics from Roch dale playing the long ball. Then again we did break up their possession slot which was pleasing . Mom Sinclair

My main concern following that depressing performance, on the back of the Scunthorpe surrender is that it looks almost certain Feathers will be responsible for the retained list and putting together the squad for next season. Even today’s crowd is down on what would normally be expected for a bank holiday, only looking respectable due to the Dale fans.

Well I went today after saying earlier in the week I wouldn't, so was pleasantly surprised by Pools endeavour today, must've had at least 70% of the possession and TBF were slightly unfortunate not to take all the points, produced very few shots that tested the Dale keeper but thought we should deffo have had a penalty when their keeper ran into Reid in the box who had possession of the ball, ref bottled it .
Like the look of Jay Sway, looks nippy and positive, needs more game time .

The ref is from Liverpool and funnily enough Rochdale have taken 3 points in every game he has refereed involving them - till today.

Can just imagine his post-match chat with Jim McNulty - " Sorry Jim, I couldn't give that penalty Manni appealed for, it was nothing like. But I did save you a point at the other end."

I would be more impressed by decent results against top teams if it were not for the fact that we counter balance them by rotten results against relegation heading teams!

Think you mean the Wealdstone surrender? Hard to tell really based on you finding today's performance depressing.

Rochdale are on 99 points after today and only got 1 of them in 2 games against Pools. We more than matched them today and had the better chances. Hayes didn't have a save to make.

Hope they don't go up and we get two cracks at them next season. It was a good all round performance fom Pools - Jay Benn was my MoM but nobody played badly.

We didn't sit back from the off and actually had the better chances with their keeper making a decent save for Sinclairs good 1st half effort. We also had a stone wall penalty denied when Reid poked the ball past the keeper before the keeper totally wiped him out but bizzarely the ref gave the free kick against Reid ( I think he gave everything against Reid all game regardless of if an offence had been committed).
Don't think anyone had a bad game but Kuogun was immense and had Mani in his back pocket throughout. I think Hates collected a tame header from Mani and that was pretty much all he had to do all game.
We're definitely paying the price for lack of goalscoring intent over the last 3 or 4 months. Just over a goal per game on average, only 4 teams scored fewer.

They did hit the post early on when Moss was given a free header.

If that’s the case, we’re just customers…the fan thing is irrelevant.

One thing that helped was effectively taking Rodney out of the game, no opportunities for him.

I"d forgotten he was playing till they announced his substitution. Made as little impact as Mani.

at least we are going the right way. the last two games were an improvement on the previous one. longing to hear the goal music at the vic again.

It's like one of those riddles...."What sound makes people happy but is seldom heard?" , apparently The Piranhas are struggling financially due to loss of copyright earnings.

A paltry average of a goal a game has been our downfall.

Better Manager n Recruitment needed.
Simple basic fix but some will be disgusted at ambition like that.

I'm sure Scunthorpe n Borehamwood haven't thrown billions at it to get to were we should be.

Magic fix once contracts expire.

It's 50/50 at this moment in time.
UTP.
2 sub 3000 crowds could speed up the process because that would mean Smithy has to put some serious effort into this regime.

Bromby isent a guaranteed fix.

We Gunna find out Summerish if we going places.

true. even with a good defence we are at least 20 goals short for a team with play off hopes.

It all feels very surreal at present.

It certainly doesn't feel like we've been Took Over and anticipating success on the pitch.
Even though it's early days.

Maybe the thought of Fevs n Debts still here has lost its takeover Mojo.

But this is Pools so expect the unexpected.
UTP.

If everything is sweet then why the silence.

All change…and nothing changed.

You would of thought by now we might of heard of some plans? Anything really but its all really flat. Some major red flags appearing for me. Why did we put so little effort into going for the play offs? The standard of the signings, seem just as bad as ever and the possibility of going into next season with possibly the most negative manager ever sends shudders down my spine.