Hartlepool v Swindon Town Matchday Thread

[Berniman]

Morris has turned it around though - in the wrong direction. I don't think the vast majority would expect him to turn this side into promotion winners, but he has an 18% win ratio, almost half of Lindsey's. There are plenty of mitigating factors, and you've identified most of those, but the last 11 games have been firmly shite.

Anyway, I think we all broadly agree with eachother even if we're managing to argue about it anyway. Something - probably a fair few somethings - need to change at the club pretty rapidly.

Morris' postmatch analysis of the games gives me hope, he clearly identifies the issues. The next step is being able to do something about them.

Agreed

[Jimmy HaveHave]

About 15 or 16 "Like/As I said"

Lovely cameo from Hawes at 8mins30secs as well

Hawes needs to stop eating the complimentary half time pies😀

[swindonmaniac]

Seems to be a regular pattern here,  we score early,  miss numerous chances to put the game to bed then concede late on (usually twice) Do we start at such a pace that we burn ourselves out are we unfit or are we just shit.

[doomster]

I think the reality is this statistics driven approach is garbage.  Take any field of work and consider if you hired all the best people on paper would you get best outcomes.  The answer is no you wouldn’t as whilst you may get lots of technicians what you don’t get is a balance.  You have to get a balanced squad who emotionally have the right character traits which can get you out of the odd hole,  we have some talented players no doubt but I see no leaders who are bugging the others up.  We also still lack plan b and are a bit lightweight for league 2.  As for Morris he needs to start earning his money as thus far mad gav has looked streets ahead.  He would do just as well to not bring on any subs and actually get a win than weaken the team by bringing off our threats.

It’s getting tiresome

[RobertT]

What if you take Lindsey’s win ratio from October as that’s when the wheels fell off well and truly as our results have fallen off a cliff since then. We may have been 6th when he left but with the games in hand other teams had we’d have been in about the same position as we are now. This squad is just a bit shit.

2 wins, 2 draws and 4 defeats in the last 8 (November and December).

In his last 8, Morris has 2 wins, 3 draws and 3 defeats

It's shit everywhere, the club, football operations wise, is a mess and it has been all season.  The reality is Lindsey wasn't even sacked.

[RobertT]

I'll try framing this another way - if you were Mark Devlin in January and you were looking at what you needed to do to solidify Leyton Orients promotion chase, and Clem tapped him on the shoulder  and said - "mate, I need to rustle up some cash, my entire team and management group up for sale, who do you fancy?", what does he say in return?

Hmm, I have Wellens, who has a promotion from this Division under his belt, so no thanks on your new Youth Coach.  Lots of injuries and no real big assets at your club Clem, probably stick with our backroom team as well.

Austin - maybe I will try him.
Williams - maybe - maybe not - possible impact sub?

That's it - after that, nobody we could offer would enhance Leyton Orients chances THIS season.

[theakston2k]

To be honest the only thing that has changed since August to October is that reality has bitten.

If you break the season down, preseason was an absolute shambles and we looked poor.

We started at Harrogate looking poor and undercooked. Then between August and October we picked up a few wins but we still looked a poor team. All the stat’s were saying we should be conceding more goals than we were, Brynn was playing out of his skin and winning player of the month every month.

Then from the end of October once a few defeats started to kick, confidence dropped and with the loss of MacDonald to injury we started conceding the goals that the stats suggested we should be conceding and the results have continued in that vein.

Then since January, we’ve lost pretty much all the experience we had, that must have impacted things off the pitch as well as on it. I don’t think it’s unfair to say Brynn’s form has dropped a bit and he’s lost confidence somewhat as is to be expected, he’s not single handedly going to keep us in games for a full season.

So really we’ve been poor and about where we are now all season, we had a spell where we overachieved a bit but we are just a poor league 2 team and the stats have said that all season.

[Jimmy HaveHave]

I'll try framing this another way - if you were Mark Devlin in January and you were looking at what you needed to do to solidify Leyton Orients promotion chase, and Clem tapped him on the shoulder  and said - "mate, I need to rustle up some cash, my entire team and management group up for sale, who do you fancy?", what does he say in return?

Hmm, I have Wellens, who has a promotion from this Division under his belt, so no thanks on your new Youth Coach.  Lots of injuries and no real big assets at your club Clem, probably stick with our backroom team as well.

Austin - maybe I will try him.
Williams - maybe - maybe not - possible impact sub?

That's it - after that, nobody we could offer would enhance Leyton Orients chances THIS season.

I have my doubts that Austin would have signed for us if Barton had said he wanted him despite meeting Clem in Australia.

[RobertT]

Sometimes my eyes deceive me - 2003/04 - I went that entire season utterly unconvinced that we were any good, bar the front two.  Thought King was a shit Manager, thought we looked bang average and I think I moaned about as much at the time.  So bloody close in the end.

This season though, you could see all our problems in the first game, and the next couple just solidified it.  We have never looked like a good "team".  We should have taken more beatings earlier in the season than we did, but we found a way, luck or not, to get some draws.  On the other side, there have been few games where I can look back and think, how the fuck did we not batter them?  The Rochdale and Harrogate games at home were the closest.   They were comfortable.  Grimsby was an anomaly - they imploded and we had a Management team willing to play Roulette.  Mansfield also against 10 men (although the Gillingham game showed we could fuck that situation up as well).

Even at our best, results wise, we've mostly been meh.

[Whingy the poo]

With our current form were only going one way. Fortunately we have hit the 50 point mark, phew!

Of which:

38 points under Lindsey (25 games).
4 points with Gav Gunning (2 games).
9 points so far with Morris (11 games).

Ok there is 8 games left but it really isn't great reading for Morris. 

[DiV]

I mean going on the data available Gav would have us Gunning for 92 points over a full season…

Just for context
Lindsey over a season = 70 pts (69.92)
Morris over a season = 38 pts (37.63)

[Mooneyraker]

Honestly I’m fucking livid with this performance.

Piss poor.

Kadji should NEVER wear a Swindon shirt again.

FBT was, for the first time this season, awful.

Most people were a disgrace to the shirt.

I left home at 0645 this morning, and I’d have backed myself to put in a better second half performance than most.

Pathetic effort. As weak as piss. They didn’t care. Unforgivable. I simply don’t want to see these players again this year.

[TheDukeOfBanbury]

Honestly I’m fucking livid with this performance.

Piss poor.

Kadji should NEVER wear a Swindon shirt again.

FBT was, for the first time this season, awful.

Most people were a disgrace to the shirt.

I left home at 0645 this morning, and I’d have backed myself to put in a better second half performance than most.

Pathetic effort. As weak as piss. They didn’t care. Unforgivable. I simply don’t want to see these players again this year.

I consoled myself in a local pub last night owned by a Hartlepool fan.

Like you livid, weak as piss.
Hartlepool were poor but they made 2 double substitutions with both sets of players busting a gut to get on that field. What do we do and what have we got Adeloye and Kadji. Absolute joke, offered nothing.

Cracking following yesterday, Hartlepool fans referring to us as a big club with decent fans.

Hoping for a mass clear out pre-season. Can only hope we have players lined up and those that have a winning mentality.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Audrey]

Mentality is the word, for sure. It isn’t that the players are just plain useless - they’re not. But their collective mindset late on in games is shot to bits. Scared to make a mistake the ball becomes a hot potato - get rid, make bad decisions, give it away cheaply. It’s obvious as it’s what happens game after game.

It’s what we’ve been saying all season - the midfield offers little to no protection to the defence. They start making rash challenges and give away cheap free kicks thereby heaping pressure.

I don’t think this is something that can be coached out of the present squad. It needs the introduction of an experienced, talkative centre back and a composed, break up play midfielder.

[Quagmire]

The players are useless though, we’ve seen nothing in 90% of them to suggest that they are anything other than useless.