parmopooly wrote:
the only reason Rotherham, Chesterfield etc used to spend more time outside the bottom division historically, is purely down to geographical location. They could get better players to play for them for not a lot of money, because it was close to where those better players lived. Hence the higher league position. We always had to get people with North East links (we never hear that phrase any more), but that left us with the scraps. There was always (and still is) a lot bigger pool of better players for the likes of those clubs to choose from, that central band across the M62 corridor has millions of people living there, between Manchester and Leeds, and down the M1 to Sheffield and Nottingham which are close to those places we mentioned such as Rotherham.. We are an hour and a half from that at least, and we have a lot smaller population in this neck of the woods.Hartlepool was also a shiit-hole, but a lot has changed in the last 10-15 years, those cheating -type clubs have lost their advantage, and players are now quite willing to travel up here to play for Pools. The likes of Richie Barker moving away from that area and signing for us back then would have been a non-starter.
But Rotherham is still a sight bigger than Hartlepool, corridor or no corridor, and well able to attract larger gates, as are nearby Barnsley and Doncaster. It just sounds like bad management. They are right to aim higher but of course silly to overspend trying to achieve that. And will be rightfully punished.