The Poolie Bunker

We saw some class football when Bournemouth visited the Vic this season. This afternoon we saw a bit of real class from Pools. Naismith's through ball for the third goal was superb. Well done lads.

We played a lot better today, no matter what anybody says and 3 points is the priority I will go to Mansfield next Saturday with some confidence which is unusual

Everyone played well and contributed

I thought we were terrible for 60 minutes of that game. 30% possession at half time is disgraceful. Dunno why people are pretending it was great stuff!! 3rd goal was top drawer but that aside we struggled for the majority of the game. Mandron played very well and I thought he held the ball up very well. Back 4 looked like conceding at every opportunity, thank god they were shit upfront . Just watched the game again and I'm far from impressed. However I'll win ugly every day of the week. 3 points and move on but let's not get carried away as that performance wasn't great.

the obsession with possession stats...

Taking over the world, sky kept flashing it up every 5 minutes.

Means bugger all if you do nowt with it.

The only stats that matter are the final score.

The back four did very well, defensively we were very good for all the ball they had especially in the second half that did they create?

Shit up front? I thought Palmer's all round game was excellent he was a real handful and Jay Simpson is the divisions top scorer.

Defence struggled to clear balls time and time again. With a good attack we could have been 4 or 5 down at half time. We won and got the points which is great but as a said let's not pretend it was great stuff because if you play like that every week you won't win many.

Fair point yubep but 30% possession at home is far from acceptable. There are positives don't get me wrong but there is still alot of negatives. Defence worries me. Pinball in the box is not good to see.

Iv watched the game again this morning and when we do have the ball the lack of options available is extremely poor. Only goals count as yubep says but getting outplayed at home should not be deemed acceptable win lose or draw.

We won though so I suppose none of this matters.

By the end of the game we had 53% of the possesion and 3 goals to their 1. Nothing to see here.

if we had produced that game away from home it would have been classed as a classic away performance. Too many crosses came in but I thought Bates and Jackson dealt with them well. (One dodgy clearance aside which led to the goal) apart from Carson making a decent save from a header i cant remember him doing much else.

We didnt have loads of the ball but hurt them when we did and second half I never felt like we would concede to be honest.

Bingham alongside Mandron would give us a better outlet and caused them a different kind of problem.

Not pretty but it worked and il take that all day long.

can't believe I'm saying this but i agree with Mr Birthmark on a lot of what he says. we did ride our luck at times and for most of the first half we looked devoid of options going forward which just increased the pressure on the back 5 as the ball was constantly being recycled by orient. what i did notice was, that despite being under almost constant pressure before we conceded, the attitude of the entire team was a lot more determined and aggressive. bates and jackson defended well throughout (the goal aside) and carroll and duckworth improved as the game went on. it happens at every level of football when a team that perhaps isn't as blessed with ability as the opposition, they have to make up for the shortfall with increases work rate and effort. that hasn't happened on the few occasions i've seen us this year, but today it did. maybe it was the loan players dragging everyone up a notch, maybe it was the fact that it was on telly, but if we can bring that sort of bloody-minded solidity to every game this season, we'll be fine. i wish the loan players were all ours to keep, but obviously that's impossible, but if we can make hay while they're here, midtable obscurity and safety seems likely.

From the first twenty minutes (when we had been poor) the performance reminded me of some of victories under Mick Wadsworth.

We were playing a good side who will be up there come May, our performance was fully committed and we really grew into the game I thought. We looked solid, the keeper is excellent, if Bates keeps playing like he is he'll change a lot of opinions of very quickly, Duckworth is playing really well the defensive side of his game has really improved. Even Carroll was defensively better than he has been yesterday. After that first twenty mates I never thought they looked like scoring. It was also good the match winner played in our central midfield, which has been a real problem area, once Magnay started to grow into the game snapping into tackles we gradually got on the ball more and we were clinical and did more with it than they did when we had it. They had possession that didn't hurt us. Good win against a decent team that will give the players confidence going forward.

Carson made one save. Shots hitting posts or bar - nil. Shots within 3 feet of posts or bar - nil.

On the other hand , our midfield and attack played like they were complete strangers to each other for 60 minutes.

Oh hang on, they WERE complete strangers! None of them started in Pools' last League game.

Seems like it's a managers job to find the positives in every bad performance and a certain type of fan's self-appointed task to find the negatives in every performance win, lose or draw.