DW - win

By Charlie Summerbell
March 28 2010

The crisis is over for Hartlepool United – now it’s a full-blown emergency as their awful results continue to send the team tumbling down the League One table. A manager sacked by the club a year and four months ago saw his team inflict a home defeat that left the Victoria Park fans calling for another sacking … this time of Chris Turner.

The club’s Director of Sport took over the reins after Danny Wilson was sacked in December 2008 and after just escaping relegation, Turner rebuilt the squad to give the club and the fans hope for this season.
But look at the League table and you will see that the move has failed as Pools have struggled to find any sort of consistency in a season of under-achievement.

Wilson, the target of anger from the stands long before he was sacked, has meanwhile quietly rebuilt Swindon and turned them into strong challengers for promotion.

Pools had not given him the freedom the sign as many players as Turner has signed, but he has proved his worth as a manager now – perhaps he isn't a bad manager after all.
Turner, meanwhile, made a lot of promising signings last summer and had a much stronger squad to work on than Wilson had, but the simple fact is that both he and the players have failed.
Wilson was sacked for that after having less to work with.
Pools worked hard against Swindon, but struggled to get back into the game after Charlie Austin scored the only goal with just over half an hour gone.

Antony Sweeney hit the bar, but otherwise they lacked punch and rarely looked like levelling.

The squad might be good – we’ve been told that often enough – but the results and the performances are not, and Pools are now a single point above the bottom four, with many of the team around them producing far better results.

The fans who directed their anger at Turner in the closing stages of the game are probably just as fed up of being told how well Pools played in defeats away from home as they are of being told the squad is too good to go down.