The Poolie Bunker

Currently losing 3-0 at Chorley and bottom of the table, what's going wrong there?

Looks like they are doomed.
The older generation of fans have given up going by their poor support.

We can forget about the old derbie ever happening again.

They away to Redcar Town in the FA Cup.

The day their ‘saviour’ walked through the door into Feethams back in the day must be a day they regret in disgust.
Too good to be true it turned out..and it was.
I genuinely feel sorry for their fans as it could have been us at certain times in our history, cruel old world, but here’s hoping they rally round.
I always find it sad looking back at established clubs who disappeared to be replaced by M25 clubs with joke crowds, funny old world.

never hated them as long as pools beat them and we finished higher than them in the league. without a proper real ground they,ll always be struggling for new fans to come and the older ones are just living on nostalgia. As for these new age M25 teams who really are excited about bromley and crawley on a fixture list. All they,ll prove is that clubs will get there lowest league home gate when they play them. Away days in places like chester, darlo, torquay and workington are far superior than those two bland places.

And now we have ex wearside n northern league teams clipping our heals.

Which would of been unimaginably 20 years ago.

We could be playing South Shields and Hebburn next season.

Darlo looked nailed on for the NLN play-offs for a long time last season but fell away right at the end.

Cedric Main was their main goalscorer but he's now at Fylde.

The only ex-Poolies in their squad are 35-year-old Paddy McLaughlin and Brad Walker! Another past his sell-by date player on their books is Mark Beck.

The only team below them in the NLN is Spennymoor Town, who have really lost their way since they sacked Spike Lee. Thought with them signing goal-machine Danny Johnson they'd be flying this season

I don't know whether some players when they get to the end of their careers have no drive to achieve anything or just go through the motions knowing some daft club will pay their wages to watch them blunder through games and in and out of the treatment room, there's a couple of players you mention there Hogan's that we had the misfortune to sign and you wouldn't want to lumber on your worst enemies nevermind a local club

Even if older players aren't stealing a wage there's questions about whether they'll last 90 minutes and how much time they'll spend on the treatment table.

Spenny have 5 players in their squad well into their 30s. Glenn Taylor is 36 now, Richie Bennett 35, Matty Dolan and Danny Johnson both 33, Rob Ramshaw 32... it must be like watching walking football at times.

Hebburn Town have a much younger squad with Pools loanees Josh Donaldson and Kian Foreman both in amongst the goals.

The problem for Darlo, and to some extent Spenny even with their rich chairman, is convincing players to sign for a part time club in County Durham, when they can do far less travelling staying around the Yorkshire area, or sign for a bank rolled team on tyneside, both Shields and Hebburn have benefactors throwing the money around and Gateshead are still full time somehow.
I know some of the names of players we missed out on for whatever reasons, and they all would have improved us greatly. 3 ended up at the heed, 2 at Harrogate, 2 at Worksop and there are others but they were the main ones.
Walker looks ok but we struggle defensively as a team so it’s unfair to blame him specifically.

Thanks for the insight. Football is a money game at every level. We've seen that in the NL where teams with tiny fan bases somehow put together better teams that Pools with our much bigger potential support. We think we should be the dogs bollocks this season because we've finally got an owner again with some serious money - but so have half the teams in this division

Brad Walker hasn't the best relationship with Poolies because at various times in his career he's delivered far less than he seemed capable of.

its 2026 now and not 1926 where the size of the gates clubs get more or less placed them in which leagues they played in. now its all about the size of the owners pockets and the sponsorship money clubs can get it. LS might be a lot richer than any of us but where in the list of rich club owners will he be. One thing we as fans can be proud od is that we can still get 4,000 through the gates even if thats over 1,000 less than the start of the season. soft plastic outfits like boreham wood would be in the minus numbers if that happened to them. however at this moment of time there chances of promotion are greater than outs which surely is not right. at least we have the vic unlike darlo where the problems started leaving feethams.

Unless they gave massive amounts of access to away fans, Darlo wouldn't fill that stadium if they were in the Championship. I have friends who support them and at the time they were puffing their chests out at their superstructure and telling me that we were so inferior with our "bus shelters", I warned them that ground (and the guy who built it) would lead to their demise, and it did. They used to taunt us with we'll never play you again. Well it looks as if they were just about right about that. They got us to that stadium once and got hammered, giving us a 100% record there.
Money is the be all and end all for sustained success these days. If Darlo had the money to attract better players then they would get them.
I feel sorry for them. It could easily have been us. Although we are not much better placed but look to have a better chance.
I hope they get a decent owner and climb back. They are due a bit of good fortune.
It was a great rivalry and I would welcome it back.

To be fair, I genuinely thought Gorgeous George Reynolds was doing his best but was hamstrung severely by the local council who really didn't give a toss about wether the town had a football club or not. They wouldn't sanction any events at the ground other than the league and cup football matches, preventing music events and even car boot sales.
To be honest I wish we were playing them every season again in the EFL, I never wanted them to be better than us but I didn't want to see their demise either.
Us against Carlisle or York is nowhere near what those derbies were like for players and fans.

It’s grim at Darlo these days. We’ve now had 8 home defeats in a row and I’ve seen them all. It’s got to the stage where I’m just turning up in auto, not even expecting anything, and almost forgetting why I’m there. It’s like some kind of tragic comedy. Whoever turns up as our opponents gets the rub of the green and is better.

Steve Watson is a good manager but we can all see his demeanour wilting, his desire fading. The same thing happened with Armstrong. Managers get pissed off with waiting for more money/waiting for news on the proposed new stadium, waiting, waiting, waiting. Meanwhile, players choose to go elsewhere.

It seems like the recipe for disaster is slowly getting cooked, HOWEVER, I don’t think we’ll go down. I’m sure we can pull it round to some degree.

Bloody hell. It's tough watching 2 or 3 home losses on the bounce, never mind 8! Hope there's some light at the end of the tunnel for Darlo soon.

Looking at your team on paper you should be doing better than you currently are, I've followed Aidan Rutledge's career since he played for Birtley and wonder why he's not been starting for you recently, is he just back from injury?, and yes I know he got sent off the other night but at least he seems to give a f..k

I saw a post on Twitter saying that the Darlo budget for this year was £635k. With our reported budget being around £2.6m, four times that of Darlo, that is a huge jump between two divisions.

I sometimes despair at the trend over the past few years of mainly northern clubs who had decent gates when they were successful and had untapped potential, being replace by M25/ Home Counties outfits with sugar daddies and crowds of under two thousand proving money talks, but support wise is a joke.
Right budget and right manager is now the key…crowds don’t matter it sometimes appears…..reminds me of Rushden and Diamonds…attended all three away matches in their stunted golden years, but what struck me was attending and finding it was like attending a girls hockey match with all the squeals from the crowd…a true family support as we found pre match at various drinking establishments, it all seemed so American….but it all turned to dust when the owner left……pity about the ground though.

Thanks. It is grim! That’s losses, not even a measly draw in amongst that lot and I think this run of losing goes back to the 14th of March. That’s by memory, I can’t be bothered to check.