I really appreciate the comments mate and I'm glad you're enjoying the read! It's probably been my most favourite save I've done for a while over the past few editions of FM and don't have any plans to stop it anytime soon! Starting to wonder just how far I might be able to take this team now and with a new stadium potentially on the horizon, everything seems to be going in the right direction!
First order of business over the Summer was to get the loan deals of Matias Baldo, Aliou Traore and Xavier Amaechi all renewed and I'm pleased to say that all three have agreed new season long loan deals for another season!
Next, I picked up a couple of youngsters on free transfers as I look to players I might be able to bring through the ranks in the future. Shaun Thirlwell comes in after being released by Spurs and looks OK, and Henry Lawrence joins after his release from Chelsea and looks the better prospect of the two, although he is a couple of years older.
Guess who's back! Arsenal striker, Eloy Gonzalez, who helped us to promotion from League One a couple of seasons ago, is back at the club on a season long loan and will challenge Kieron Harrold for his place up top! I genuinely feel like I have two good, proven strikers in the team this year!
George *** and Liam Noble have been with me since the start of my career but it was time to let them move on in the Summer when their contracts expired. Nathan Dyer also retired from the professional game, which won't hurt us too much as he was slightly disappointing last season anyway!
The season kicks off about a month early this year as we have the Winter World Cup which means we will barely play a single game throughout the whole of November and December! We will kick off the new season away at our bogey team, Rotherham! Tough matches against the likes of Preston and Fulham also come early in what is a difficult start by the looks of it!
After finishing 7th in the division last season, the bookies still have no faith in us whatsoever to stay in the league for another year and again have us as the favourites for the drop! More fool them I say!
However, they do recognise just how good Kieron Harrold was last year and have made him the favourite to win the golden boot again this season!
They also fancy Matias Baldo to follow up his success last season and be the best player in the league again! Considering the bookies fancy us to have the best player and the top goalscorer in the league, it's surprising they have us finishing bottom!
Unfortunately though, Baldo picked up an injury during pre season and will miss the first couple of weeks of the season!
Pre season was short with only 4 games played, due to the league campaign starting early this year, and it was an unbeaten run for us which included a very respectable draw against The Gooners.
We have a home draw against Bury in the first round of the Carabao Cup!
With over £3 million now in the bank, but hardly any of that free'd up for me to use on transfers, I decided to ask the board to invest some of it into the junior coaching budget to which they agreed!
Connor O'Grady keeps the armband for another season, whilst Glen Kamara is made vice captain since joining the club in January!
Some more transfer news as I tied up the permanent deal for winger, Theo Ndicka Matam, on transfer deadline day! The 22 year old will cost us £235,000, with £105k paid up front and the rest over installments over 2 years. He is predominantly a left sided player, but can cover the right as well and will likely become a key member of our team...or at least I hope he will seeing as he is our highest paid player now on £8k per week!
There were also a couple of loan deals that went through on deadline day too! New signing Henry Lawrence has left the club to join Crewe for the season where he should get plenty of first team football, whilst Adam Porter has joined us from Wolves on a 6 month loan deal to provide immediate cover up front after injuries hit us in our first couple of league games (see below).
It shows just how much of a higher level other clubs in this league are operating at, when they are selling players for over £50 million!!
Just before the competitive season kicked off, the board reminded me of their expectations. Pretty much the same as last year!
Kicking off the season with a win is great, but kicking it off with a win against your bogey team on their own turf is ****** fantastic! It was our wide men that thrived here as both left and right wingers scored our first 2 goals.
Our first home game of the season results in another victory against newly promoted Preston. In all fairness, I'd have expected to beat them so I'm pleased with the result!
Kieron Harrold will miss up to 6 weeks and last year's top goalscorer will be sorely missed, especially after kicking off this year's campaign with a goal in both our opening games!
We still find ourselves bottom of the wage expenditure standings after a full season in the Championship, which shows just how good our 7th placed finish was last season!
There's no doubt that Fulham are one of the best sides in the league this season and they've backed that up by winning their opening 2 games before this one! So having a player sent off inside the opening quarter of an hour was not ideal for us!! Despite that though, we managed to match Fulham for the full 90 minutes and possibly should have even won the game as Traore missed a 2nd half penalty!
Although Brentford are a good side, this was a disappointing result for us as they've started their campaign with 3 defeats before this game, so I really feel like we should have taken advantage of their poor start and won the game!
We lost another key player to injury for a few weeks during the Brentford game as Xavier Amaechi limped off with a twisted ankle!
Just to kick us in the teeth a little more that he probably won't play throughout September, Amaechi scoops the Young Player of the Month award for August!
Despite dominating the game, we made hard work of getting the win and it was a single Mark Kitching strike that gets us all 3 points against Birmingham!
There's no shame in this defeat and we held our own against one of the best sides in the league!
With only 1 defeat from our opening 6 league games, we are sitting pretty in the top half of the table! It's a very promising start considering the level of opposition we have faced already and bodes well for a decent season ahead!
The club's season ticket sales continue to rise year on year and now two thirds of our capacity will be season ticket holders! That new stadium is desperately needed....come on you investors!!
I encouraged the board to invest in the club's youth recruitment. I wonder whether it will have any impact on our youth intake later this season?
We get through, but it's a slightly disappointing result as we labour to a 1-0 win over our League Two opponents! Yes, I rotated virtually the whole squad, but all of these players have been in and around the first team for a while so there is no real excuses to struggle as much as we did to get the win!
A much better performance and result to match against League Two opposition again in the 2nd round! Good to see Novakovich scoring two on his first start of the season!
There was a little rotation for the County game, but the main talking point was the debut I handed to 16 year old Kristian Gordon. He had a decent game as well returning a match rating of 7.10.
Again we get a home draw against lower league opposition as we'll play League One's Walsall in the 3rd round.
A decent result away at Reading who have scored more than any other team so far this season! We knew they would come hard in attack, but we matched them with 2 goals of our own to share the spoils.
A big, big win over a West Brom side that beat us twice in the league and knocked us out of the FA Cup last season! We had a few nervey moments here, especially in the last 10 minutes, but overall we were brilliant and I'm proud of the lads!
Absolutely gutted to lose this one, especially as we were 3-2 up going into the final 2 minutes! Swansea were the slightly better side, but it still stinks to lose a game like that!
Our strikers weren't 'on song' today otherwise we might have won this by a wider margin. However, a solid 1-0 is never a bad thing and today we had right back Colin Bell to thank for the winning strike!
Southampton had only conceded 5 goals in their opening 10 matches before this, so this was an even more exceptional result for us than it initially looks! Eloy Gonzalez was on absolute fire as he netted all 4 of our goals as we absolutely battered The Saints!
An absolute screamer from 30 yards from Matias Baldo in the 87th minute saved us a draw against Charlton! We'd been banging on the door all game, but Gonzalez was surprisingly out of sorts up front after scoring 4 in our previous game against Southampton! In the end though, we salvaged a point which was well deserved on the balance of play!
I have to give a shout out to Carl Magnay for scoring the best goal we've ever scored under my management, as he curled in a beautifully placed effort from 35 yards to bring us level in the game. Just a shame for him that it meant nothing in the grand scheme of things as we went on to lose the game!
Theo Ndicka Matam has made an impact since signing and already has 4 assists and a goal in his 10 appearances so far, but he will now miss up to 4 weeks of action through injury.
Thirteen games into the season and we have made an impressive start to the campaign, considering we were nailed on for relegation again with the bookies. As it stands, we are just 7 points off leaders Bristol City and are well clear of the bottom 3! I'd obviously love for us to make a push for the playoffs this year, but am realistic as well and would happily settle for another mid/top half finish while I continue to build the squad!
A bit of squad rotation didn't disrupt the team at all as we cruised to a comfortable 3-0 win over Walsall that sees us into the 4th round of the competition for only the 2nd time in the 5 seasons I have been here! Last time we got there, we faced Man City and were understandably knocked out!
It was fellow Championship side Bristol City up next and for the first time in my career I take Hartlepool into the quarter finals of the Carabao Cup as we beat the high flying Bristol club with relative ease if I'm honest! I was expecting a much tougher game than we actually got here!
It could be the end of the road for us in the next round as we take on giants Manchester City!
A nice win here over QPR as we create over 30 chances during our most dominant performance of the season so far! Kieron Harrold is on the comeback trail after his recent injury and it's good to see him getting on the scoresheet and hopefully getting quickly back in the groove!
A shame we couldn't find the goal to give us the win over The Latics.
I mentioned in the last update that Carl Magnay had scored the best goal I'd seen under my management in our match against Sheffield Wednesday....that statement was backed up by the fact it took the Goal of the Month prize...be interesting to see if it wins Goal of the Season at the end of the year too!
Back to back bore draws as again we struggle in front of goal despite creating plenty of good chances!
Colin Bell set to miss around a month of action!
That's 3 games in a row now where we have been very dominant and failed to score a single goal to win the game! Yea it's great that our defence is holding strong, but our inability to score goals is costing us valuable points at the moment!
Another game where we just can't score! That's now over 360 minutes without scoring a goal and when you don't score against a side in the top 3 then you're very unlikely to take anything from the game and that's what happened here. The fact that we played three quarters of the game with 10 men didn't help either!
Finally a couple of goals as we score a massive win over Brighton! Luke Williams got us on our way with a cracking free kick, before Kieron Harrold rounded things off with a tidy finish late on!
Kieron Harrold came on from the bench and nodded home a powerful header from a corner to give us all 3 points over Leeds! Another big win against another big club!
Another victory as we make it three wins in a row, although this time we did need to rely on one of their players to score our winning goal!
Wow, Millwall really were shocking here and we managed to create nearly 40 chances at their goal, converting 4 of those! Aliou Traore turned in a man of the match performance from centre mid as he bagged himself a couple of really good goals!
This was a close knit game that always looked like it would be settled by a single goal and to be fair, Paul O'Connor's winner was a great volleyed effort worthy of winning the match for them! Not too disappointed to lose to such a big side here!
Christopher Lynch came off towards the end of the Villa game with an injury and will now miss 3 months! Luckily, we now have a (nearly) 2 month break for the World Cup so hopefully he won't miss too much competitive football.
Bang on half way through the season and we are sitting in a ****** playoff spot! I never would have imagined this at the start of the campaign despite our 7th place finish last year and am naturally delighted! I think the most impressive thing about our season so far is the fact we have only conceded 4 goals at home this season in 12 games...that's an extremely impressive stat for any side at any level!
A complete shock in the World Cup as Colombia lift the trophy after beating England in the final!!
With there being a 2 month break whilst the World Cup was on, I set up and played 3 friendlies to get some match sharpness/fitness back for the lads before we picked up on the competitive games again. A wonderful result against Crystal Palace was soon followed by a defeat at Middlesbrough, before Leicester gave us a ****** good hiding! I could only hope it wouldn't dent the lads confidence with a league game just around the corner.
The lads didn't seem too effected by the thrashing from Leicester as they gave me a professional performance here on our way to a solid 1-0 victory over Rotherham. Danny Redmond's 1st goal of the season being the difference between the two sides.
We were just edged by Fulham here, but again they are a very strong side in this division so it's not a terrible result!
Disappointing to only take a point from this game against a Preston side in the relegation places! We really should have tucked away at least one chance to take the spoils here and there's no real excuses for not doing so!
We continue to defy the odds and win games against these 'massive' clubs! This was another huge win as a statement of our intent to continue our good form into the 2nd half of the season and not fall away and drop down the league!
One of them close games that could have gone either way and it was the home side that edged it here! Gutted but it is what it is!
We continue to maintain a playoff spot for now and if we win our game in hand, we can jump above Fulham into 5th! There are a whole host of teams breathing down our neck so we'll have to be on our 'A game' if we are going to stay in the top 6!
So it seems that come the year 2023, replays in the FA Cup have been abolished as we went into extra time in the first game here against Forest! I have to admit I am a fan of the rule change as replays can be a major pain in the ****, and especially as we were able to get over the line with the added on 30 minutes here as Kieron Harrold bundled the ball over the line on the 100 minute mark to see us into the 4th round!
We saw off another Championship side in the 4th round in the form of West Brom. A really impressive display from my lads here as we gain a bit of revenge over the club that knocked us out of the competition last season!
We are into the 5th round of the FA Cup for the first time under my management and it's fair to say the draw has been relatively kind to us as we'll play Millwall at home in the next round. We'll go into the game confident after beating them 4-0 back in October in the league.
Manchester City were just too strong for us and our Carabao Cup run comes to an end. However, we have nothing to be ashamed of and have enjoyed this year's campaign going further than ever before under my management...it bodes well for the future as I eventually want to make Hartlepool a side that is consistently making the latter stages of these domestic competitions. For this season, we can take pride in the fact we were the only non Premier League side to make the quarter final stage.
Pleased that the board have granted my request to invest some more money into the junior coaching budget!
Another thumbs up to the board as they grant my request to increase the coaching team. It means I will now have a team around me consisting of 1 assistant manager, 7 general coaches, 2 fitness coaches, 2 goalkeeping coaches and 1 head of youth development!
It's been a little while since another club came calling for my services, but it was Bournemouth who were knocking at my door in early January. Obviously, I immediately rejected the approach!
Shortly after that, I had an approach from Newcastle - probably the biggest club to show an interest in me so far. But I'm not going anywhere!
And then it really went to the next level as Chelsea came and offered me an interview!! This one shows just how far I've come in nearly 5 years, but even the lure of such a massive club is not enough to make me give up on my project here at Hartlepool!
Just passed 5,000 views!! Thank you to everyone that has been following this story so far! I hope you're enjoying reading about it as much as I'm enjoying playing it!!
This was the only move I made in the January transfer window and to be honest I'd have gladly not signed anyone. However, some of the lads were complaining about a lack of depth in defence, so I brought in young centre back Shaun Webber on loan for the rest of the season from Leicester. Not sure exactly how much he will play, but at least it should assure some of my players that I do listen to their concerns and will act upon them if I feel necessary!
An entertaining spectacle for the fans, but I was ****** at my team for twice letting a two goal lead slip! We found ourselves 2-0 and 4-2 up and still didn't manage to win the game - not good enough!
We were made to work hard for this win, but got there in the end thanks to a Luke Williams penalty 14 minutes from time. A good win over a mid table side who are trying hard to break into the top 10.
A massive win away at 2nd placed West Brom...possibly one of our most impressive victories of the season! Maybe we are proving to be West Brom's bogey team after beating them 5-0 in the FA Cup last month as well!
A 90th minute winner from Kieron Harrold ensures we nick victory away at Derby! A very entertaining games for the fans as both sides notched up nearly 40 chances between them, but it was us that just had a little bit more on the day!
On paper this looks like a great point away at Southampton, but when you consider we were 2-0 up going into the final 5 minutes of the game, it's actually a case of 2 points lost and I'm livid that the lads have let this slip through our fingers!
The Swans are top of the league and look nailed on for automatic promotion, so this was not the worst result....in fact, we actually gave a decent account of ourselves and were unlucky to lose the game.
I'm pretty confident we'd have won this game, had Matam not got himself sent off mid way through the first half! Still, I guess I should be at least a little pleased that we managed to claim a point from the game after playing for so long with 10 men!
With only 11 games of the season remaining, we continue to cling on to a playoff spot. I'm naturally delighted to be in the race for the playoffs at the latter stages of the season, but it's not going to be easy with huge clubs like Leeds and Aston Villa right on our tails!
Despite dominating the entire match, it required a late equalizer for us to take the game into extra time, where we then went on to win the game with another Kieron Harrold winner (just as he did against Forest in the 3rd round). The right result in the end on the balance of play!
We'll take on our senior affiliate, Arsenal, in the quarter finals.
Yet again, the youth intake is a disappointing one! The year I finally get a 'golden generation' I'm throwing a f*cking party....gutted to have had 5 years of **** intakes so far!! Although I have still managed to bring through Colin Bell and Christopher Lynch through the system despite it being so poor!
This was a huge game as 6th took on 3rd in the table with only 5 points splitting us, so I'm absolutely ecstatic to have come away with a massive, massive win! A single Eloy Gonzalez strike was enough to secure all 3 points, but I have to give a shout out to keeper, Ted Smith, who pulled off a terrific save in the 92nd minute low to his left from a headed effort to ensure we got the win!
After such a big win against Wednesday, it was really frustrating to follow it up with a defeat away at relegation threatened QPR! One step forward, one step back!
I'm gonna admit I was pretty ****** at the end of this one as again we throw away a 2-0 lead with only the final 10 minutes to go! Granted, their equalizer was an absolute worldie from Nick Powell, but there's still no excuse for not winning this game, especially with Wigan sitting 21st in the table at kick off!
Xavier Amaechi notched his 4th league goal of the season to get us back to winning ways away at Forest!
Unfortunately, we lost Mark Kitching to injury in the Forest game and he now looks set to miss all of our remaining league games this season!
Which is a massive loss as he has statistically been the 2nd best player in the whole Championship this season based on average ratings!
Bristol City, like us, are chasing a playoff berth and sat only 3 points behind us at kick off! So I can't emphasise enough the importance of this win for us! Marcus Harness was our goalscoring hero, grabbing the winner only a few minutes after coming on from the bench.
A bad result away at Ipswich. If we don't finish in the top 6 this season, there are plenty of games just like this one that we will look back on that cost us. Far too often this season we have dominated games, created a ridiculous amount of chances, but failed to score!
Only five games left and we're still in their with a shout at the playoffs! It's really tight though and 3 of our final 5 games are against Leeds, Aston Villa and Brighton...three of the clubs in and around us also fighting to make the playoffs! It's going to be a tense finish to the season, that's for sure!
As expected, the Gooners were too strong for us! Still, we kept the scoreline reasonable and have nothing to be embarrassed about with this result!
What a massive result this was for us! But how ****** off will those Brighton fans be...this was a must win game for them to stay in the playoff hunt and their team managed only 4 shots on goal in the whole game! On the other hand, we sent our fans home to the other end of the country very happy indeed and at the end of the day, that's all I really care about!
Again, we follow up a very good result with a very poor one. Something we've done too often this season! Blackburn simply outshone us here though and took their chances really well, but I definitely expect better from my team when playing at home against a side in the bottom half of the table!
It was 4th vs 5th here and the main thing I felt we had to do coming into this game was keep Kemar Roofe quiet up front for them, as the striker had scored 25 goals in 32 games during the league campaign already!! We managed to do that, but it was the substitute that came on for him that netted a couple of late goals for Leeds instead...a big result for them and a massive dent in our hopes of finishing in the top 6!
After losing to Leeds, this had become a must win match for us, so I'm absolutely chuffed that the lads went out and delivered!
That Millwall win was made extra special by the fact it confirmed us a playoff spot with other results going our way! That relieves all the pressure on our final game of the season against Aston Villa!
With a spot in the playoffs already confirmed, this game was just about giving some game time to some of the rotation players and protecting some of our best assets from injury before the playoffs begin! Obviously, you don't like to lose any game, but this is the one loss we've suffered in my 5 years as manager that I really couldn't give one single toss about!!
The final league table confirms our 6th placed finish and playoff berth! Swansea win the Championship title on the last day of the season and it's Watford who go up automatically with them! Ipswich, Nottingham Forest and Preston are all relegated to League One, but the most disappointed fans will probably be that of Southampton who finish 7th!
It's Sheffield Wednesday for us in the playoffs and we have every reason to believe we can win this tie, having won 3 of our last 4 meetings against them!
Matias Baldo got us off to the perfect start in the home leg against Wednesday, opening the scoring in only the 2nd minute with his 7th strike of the season! Within 10 minutes, Kieron Harrold had his 15th goal of the campaign and it's safe to say we'd made an early impact on the game and the whole tie!
Sheffield Wednesday were rattled and Leroy Fer put his side in real trouble when he lost his head in the 14th minute and was sent off for an awful challenge as he went straight through the back of Luke Williams...luckily Williams came away from the challenge injury free! The whole tie was really there for the taking now from our point of view.
We continued to batter their goal for the rest of the first half and right on the stroke of half time, Luke Williams converted a penalty to make it 3-0! My half time team talk was simply to tell the lads not to let complacency creep in and we could win this by 4 or 5!
Unfortunately, there were no more goals in the second half, although there should have been as Luke Williams missed a spot kick, but I'm not complaining as the lads have done me and the fans proud here in the first leg and set ourselves up nicely for a potential trip to Wembley!
It looked like we might be in for a tense, nervy game when Wednesday took the lead as early as the 12th minute! But the lads regrouped and held solid throughout the rest of the game, defending really well! Danny Redmond came off the bench to score a late equalizer and secure our passage to the Championship Playoff Final!!!
West Brom overcame Leeds in the other Playoff Semi so they would be our opponents at Wembley in the game that is billed as the richest match in football! Undoubtedly, it will be the biggest game in the history of Hartlepool United Football Club!!
We go into the final, with every reason to believe we can win it! We have a better record over the 7 games we have played against The Baggies, winning our last two games 5-0 and 3-0!
Butterflies in my stomach, sweaty hands, a slight feeling of nausea...I had the lot in what was the biggest game of not only my managerial career, but in this little club's entire history! We started slowly, with West Brom controlling the opening 15 minutes of the game, although Luke Williams did have a headed effort saved well by Baggies keeper, Sam Johnstone.
By the half hour mark, we seemed to be settling into the game a little, when disaster struck...or did it?! The referee awards West Brom a penalty when Colin Bell brings down Rondon when he is clean through on goal...my head is in my hands as I expect to see the red card produced...only for it to be yellow...we got away with one there!! Then it got even better as Ted Smith pulled off a penalty save to keep the scores level at 0-0!!
However, things did take a turn for the worse just before half time when Bell (not learning from his earlier mistake and luck to still be on the pitch), makes another rash challenge and the referee promptly produced a second yellow followed by the red card! Only a couple of minutes later and West Brom were in front through Rondon who slid a low placed effort under Smith from 8 yards out!
West Brom started the second half the better side, but it was Cameron Humphreys 25 yard strike that nearly brought us level on 55 minutes, as he was only denied by another great save from Johnstone!
Humphreys (a centre back by the way) seemed to be on a 1 man mission to claw us back into this game as he again brought a fine save from Johnstone on 66 minutes to keep The Baggies in front! And only 2 minutes later, the playing field was levelled as Madisha was also sent off for West Brom...10 men a piece now and all to play for!
We went all out attack and on 85 minutes, half time substitute Aliou Traore cracked home a powerful volley from 18 yards out to make it 1-1! Late drama at Wembley and the game was going to extra time!
It was us who created the best early chances in extra time as Connor O'Grady headed only inches over the bar, before Johnstone again pulled off a save to keep Kieron Harrold out. No doubt Johnstone was doing a wonderful job for them between the sticks!
Rondon came agonisingly close to nicking it for them right at the death with only seconds remaining, but with neither team having broken the deadlock during the extra period, the game went to the lottery of penalties! And unfortunately, it just wasn't to be our day...I wasn't confident going into the shootout as my best penalty taker only has a stat of 11 for penalty taking, and when Kieron Harrold and Aliou Traore both missed our opening two pens, the damage was done! Another year of Championship football for us it is!
With the money generated from the playoff final, along with our solidarity payment from the FA, the club's finances have never looked so strong! Let's hope the board give me a decent transfer budget over the Summer to improve the squad and make another assault at the playoffs or automatic promotion again next season!
In other news, Scotty Parker left my coaching team to become new manager of Forest Green!
Our 6th placed finish in the Championship was a new record high for the club!
This was a proud moment for me as Colin Bell, a player I have brought through the club's youth system, has won the Championship Young Player of the Season!!
Bell also made the Championship Team of the Year!
Last year's fan's player of the year, Matias Baldo, doesn't even make the top 3 this season! Instead, it's all about the defenders as Cameron Humphreys, Colin Bell and Connor O'Grady take the fan's plaudits! Totally agree that Matam was the signing of the season and he really impressed me in his first year at the club!
Eloy Gonzalez is back in the overall best 11 after a season back at the club and for the most part, I agree with this lineup now. Maybe Colin Bell should be in at right back and a case can be made for Ted Smith to replace Loach in goal.
Both my strikers did a reasonably good job up top this year with Gonzalez finishing top of the pile with 17 goals, whilst Harrold finished just behind with 15. Luke Williams, a player that has been with me all the way from the National League, continues to defy the odds and perform well at this high level as he bagged 9 goals and 9 assists this season! It was new signing, Theo Ndicka Matam that finished top of the assist charts with 12 though and he has been well worth the £235k I paid for him, especially as he is now valued at more than 4x that! Plenty of players again with high average ratings over the 7.00 mark!
My Player of the Year: Theo Ndicka Matam My Young Player of the Year: Colin Bell Surprise Package: Luke Williams Must Do Better: Glen Kamara Most Disappointing: Carl Magnay
All good on the squad dynamics front with a happy team, despite the disappointment still in the air around the playoff final.
And the board are still delighted with my work!
And they are backing me this season with a mini warchest of nearly £7 million to spend on new players! I can't wait to get stuck into that!
An update on the stadium front...basically, we are getting a new one! A £20 million loan has been secured along with a £3 million sponsorship deal and in 2 years time we will move into The Hartlepool Stadium which will have a capacity double that of our current home! Exciting times ahead!
Everything is on the up in the annual commercial summary!
Being a Gillingham fan, I'm delighted to add ex Gills captain Adam Barrett to my coaching staff!
I really hope so.....although I've had to jiggle things around and share it out amongst the wage budget to make signings and put some towards the scouting budget too....so it actually left me with about £5 million....which I guess is still an absolute **** load compared to what I've had up until now!
Scott Loach retired from playing this Summer, despite me trying to get him to stay on for another year. Danny Redmond was the only other player to leave the club who has been a first team starter in the past.
My first signing of the Summer window is a relatively cheap one. We had one of the best defences in the league last year, but I felt the need to bring in another centre back to bolster my options there a little, so I've acquired Andy Boyle for only £240,000 from Burton Albion. He had a good season for them in League One last year and made the League One Team of the Year, so I'm confident he'll be a decent backup option for us!
My first season long loan for the upcoming season is 23 year old attacking midfielder, Adrien Bongiovanni, who looks like a real talent to be honest and is immediately a massive step up on our options that we had in that role (no disrespect to Luke Williams who I absolutely love). Bongiovanni has come in from OGC Nice and I'm excited to see what he'll bring to our attacking play!
That loan deal was quickly followed up with the renewals of the loan deals for Matias Baldo, Eloy Gonzalez and Xavier Amaechi. Three players that have become so important to me and three I'd love to make permanent deals one day!
My next permanent signing was a bit of experience added to the team, in the form of Nacer Chadli. He was available on a free transfer and despite the fact he is now 33 years old, I think he still has plenty to offer at this level and some of the younger lads will definitely benefit from his experience playing at the top level!
Another permanent signing up next as right winger, Mohamed Bangoura, is added to the ranks! The 21 year old comes in from FC Nantes for a fee of £525,000 as I smash the club's transfer record and he also becomes the club's highest earner on £14k per week. Let's hope he lives up to my expectations of him!
Not an incoming transfer, but this lad, Chris Pearce, has been slowly coming through the youth system over the past two seasons and looks to be progressing into a decent prospect, and he did OK during a second half of the season loan spell with Oldham last season, so I'll be looking to introduce him to some first team football this season!
Luke Molyneux has been a fantastic servant over the past 5 years, but with the new arrivals coming in this Summer, I think his first team chances will be limited! I've therefore allowed him to leave the club on loan for the season and play his football in Oxford.
There's been some ins and outs on the staffing front this Summer as well, mainly my first team coaches! I won't bore you with all the details, but I now have the best coaching attributes for every area of all the clubs in the Championship!
No change on the captaincy front ahead of the new season!
For the first time in my career, the board are allowing me to take the lads abroad for a pre season training camp, so we're off to Portugal!
We'll kick off the new season away to Derby, before welcoming newly promoted Portsmouth to Victoria Park for our first home game of the season!
The bookies are finally starting to show us a little more respect....only a little though! They don't have us to finish bottom this coming season and even have us finishing outside of the relegation spots altogether! However, considering we've managed to finish 7th and 6th over the past two seasons, I thought they still might predict us for a higher finish than 19th!
Eloy Gonzalez is fancied to challenge for the Championship golden boot this season!
And both Eloy Gonzalez and Matias Baldo are rated amongst the best players in the league going into the new campaign!
Pre season went well with the only blip being the defeat to Arsenal, but that's nothing to worry about! The win over Sporting Lison was the highlight of a pretty solid friendly campaign!
A home game against Notts County will be our first venture into this season's Carabao Cup!
Just before the new season kicked off, the board sent me their expectations for the upcoming year. After us making the playoffs last year, they could have easily expected the same, but instead they have given me a more realistic target of a mid table finish. In the cups, some progression is expected, although they don't expect to see us in the latter stages just yet!
Our season ticket sales this season tipped over the 5,000 mark for the first time.
Our wage bill is starting to rise and is up about £40k per week on last season, but we are still rock bottom of the league table on wage expenditure, with some clubs spending almost £1 million per week more than us. That's about £52 million per year on wages they spend more than us!! When you think of it like that, it's absolutely remarkable that we have got anywhere near the playoffs for the past 2 seasons!
WOW! What a way to start the new season and what a statement we have sent out to the rest of the league on the opening day! The bookies said Gonzalez and Baldo were our best players going into the season and they showed it immediately as they scored all 6 goals between the two of them! What a head start Gonzalez has given himself in the golden boot race as well!
We followed up the Derby win with another victory over Portsmouth! We always looked in control of this game despite only being 1-0 up for most of the 90 minutes, until Gonzalez scored a late 2nd to seal the win!
Well, well...are we going to be a major force away from home this year?! That's 10 goals we've scored in our first 2 away games of the season as we romped to another big win here! The goals were a bit more spread about here with each goal coming from a different scorer!
In the Summer, after Scott Loach retired, I made a big decision not to sign another keeper. I still feel Ted Smith is strong enough for the number 1 spot and was willing to have young Josh Blakesley (another product of the club's youth system) as his backup! Well, Blakesley is now going to get a chance to show me if it was the right decision as Smith will miss the next 4 weeks through injury!
A solid 1-0 as we make it 4 wins from 4 games! This was a big one as well over one of the better sides in the league! A clean sheet for Blakesley on his first start as well!
Back to back 1-0 wins as we produced another solid defensive display here. A close range, first time effort from Kieron Harrold on the hour mark was enough for us to take all 3 points and maintain our 100% start to the season! 180 minutes under Blakesley's belt and hasn't conceded a goal yet!
And that 100% record wins me the Manager of the Month award for August!
It was a clean sweep for the lads in the Young Player of the Month award as we filled 1st, 2nd and 3rd! Eloy Gonzalez won 1st place though with his 6 goals in 4 appearances throughout August!
Our first defeat of the season comes away at QPR as John Mooney simply ripped us apart! Curse of the Manager of the Month award by any chance?!
And we quickly followed it up with another defeat! This was a poor one and a game we really should have won with the amount of chances we created! Terrible result!
A response to the previous two defeats that was badly needed! We fought back from 2-0 down to win this one and I'm proud of the character showed by my lads! Young Chris Pearce bagged his first senior goal for the club and grabbed the man of the match award as well!
We hadn't beaten Fulham in any of our previous 4 meetings, so it was no real surprise that we couldn't get the win again here, despite being the better side throughout the game!
Bournemouth might be one of the favourites to win the league this year, but have made an awful start to the campaign and sat 17th at kick off here! And we really should have inflicted more pain on their supporters here but couldn't take our chances and have to settle for a disappointing draw!
Ten games into the season and it's our best start to the Championship campaign over the past 3 seasons as we have already amassed 20 points and find ourselves in the top 4! A really good start that hopefully we can build on!
I'm absolutely livid! I was hoping we could string together a bit of a run in this competition again this year after making the quarters last season, and to lose to League Two opposition in the first round is simply not acceptable!!
With the bank balance looking good with nearly £4.5 million in the account, I asked the board to invest in the club's youth facilities!
The board also decided to invest some of their money in.....well, ME!! They more than double my wages with a new 3 year contract which I happily bite their hands off for!
Very pleased to pick up the win here after Colin Bell saw red on the hour mark! Chris Pearce is showing that he is more than ready for the step up to first team football as he bagged his 2nd goal of the season...it was a well taken low effort from 15 yards as well!
I had expected to beat Reading, so I'm a bit gutted we didn't! However, I'm pleased we showed a fighting spirit to come back from a goal down twice and earn a well deserved draw!
Nacer Chadli will miss a fair chunk of the season with injury! Bit ****** as that's £10k per week I'm now ******* down the drain on a player that can't play - don't get me wrong, I know it's all part and parcel of the football world, but it hurts when you're such a small club already punching above your weight where every penny counts!
I'm really ****** at this result as were completely dominant, and were caught on the break twice as Charlton scored a couple to nick a win from under our noses! The defence needs to concentrate much better as this kind of defeat is not good enough!
Good to see us bounce back immediately from the disappointment against Charlton! Wednesday are a big club and a decent side, so winning at their place is always going to be a great achievement!
Centre back, Connor O'Grady, cost us a point today when his poor backpass to Ted Smith was ceased upon by Villa's Aden Ramsey to score an easy goal and win them the game! Not the example I expect my captain to be setting!
Matias Baldo and Chris Pearce pick up the top two places in the October Young Player of the Month award!
A bore draw against mid table Wigan! Again, it's another game I really expected us to win though!
A fast start saw us race to 2 goals up inside the opening quarter of an hour and Leeds looked rattled for the rest of the first half! However, the bastards came out and did exactly the same thing to us in the 2nd period as they drew level within 8 minutes of the restart! However, we didn't look rattled as Leeds had in the first half and quickly restored a lead with a great volley from Charlie Goode! I hoped we might kick on from there and win the game comfortably...and I was half right as we did kick on and win the game, but it wasn't comfortable!
Rovers made us work really hard for this win, so I'm glad we got it! We had that little bit of extra quality which was the difference on the day!
Captain, Connor O'Grady' was set to miss a few weeks through injury!
At kick off, Brighton sat top of the table having already opened up an 8 point gap to 2nd placed Huddersfield, and they came into this game as 2-5 favourites to win it!! And they lived up to the bookies expectations as they trounced us...safe to say they are by far the best team we have played in a while!
A big game for both sides as 4th took on 5th in the table and it wasn't ideal that we had a weakened lineup due to the fact we'd only had a couple of days to recover from the Brighton game! Despite that, the lads gave me a stunning performance, with Eloy Gonzalez standing out with his hat trick! Incredibly, that is Gonzalez's 15th goal of the season already and we are only just going into December!
With 20 games now gone in the league, we are very much holding our own in the top 6! It definitely looks like we will challenge again for a playoff place at least, although a shot at automatic promotion certainly isn't out of reach at this stage! Brighton are already making a bold bid to finish up as champions this season with a 10 point lead already and they'll be tough to catch!
At right back, we were definitely lacking decent backup for Colin Bell, with only 34 year old Carl Magnay available as cover! Whenever Magnay has played this season, we have struggled defensively, so it was something I needed to address! That's why I have forked out £400,000 to bring in 29 year old Darnell Fisher from Wigan! He's not done too well for them this season, but they have been playing him in a right wing back role, where as I will be looking to play him in a deeper full back position and I'm hoping that will spark a better turn of form for him!
It was lucky I brought Fisher in as about a week later this happened!!
My next game in charge will be my 300th as Hartlepool manager! Only two other managers have reached that milestone before me...Billy Horner (307 games between 1976-1983) and Fred Westgarth (510 games between 1943-1957).
How in the **** did we not win this game!! 32 shots to their 7 and we have to settle for a single point with a 2-2 draw! The lads got a right bollocking at full time as again we draw another game that we should have won...this is happening far too often for my liking and I expect better concentration from my team in this kind of game!
I have to admit I do like a good solid 1-0 win! It shows grit, determination and concentration from the lads! Colin Bell grabbed the winner with his 3rd goal in his last 5 games - not bad for a right back!
When you compare the two sides, Southampton are on another level to us really...our highest valued player is worth just over £4 million, where as they have 7 players who are valued at more than double that!! So it wasn't necessarily a surprise to see us lose this one...however, what is surprising is the fact that they absolutely battered us on the scoreline but we absolutely dominated the possession and stats, creating more than 20 chances on their goal!! We very nearly pulled off the great comeback after going 3-0 down and if Matias Baldo hadn't of been sent off, we might have just done it!
A great second half performance after a pretty lacklustre 1st 45 minutes! Looks like my half time team talk worked a treat!
We opened the season with a 6-2 thrashing of Derby County, but they'd recovered from that and now find themselves in the playoff spots along with us, so I was expecting a tougher game this time round! And I wasn't wrong as Derby were much more competitive, but we just about managed to steal the win as Colin Bell struck home from 25 yards with one of the final kicks of the game!
I'm completely stunned on how we never won this game! We absolutely pummelled their goal for 90 minutes, with nearly 30 shots but a failure to find the back of the net even once has cost us and this is a very poor defeat! My attacking players all got a right kick in at full time!
There's no doubt about it...I definitely have a side that produce stronger performances against the better sides in the league and this was another! A massive win over another side challenging for the playoff spots!
Top goalscorer Eloy Gonzalez set to miss our next 3 or 4 games!
Based on this performance, QPR could be in real trouble this year! We completely outclassed them with a relentless attack on their goal for 90 minutes which resulted in 40 shots and 3 goals, which could have easily been 6 or 7!
Another 8 games played since my last update and we are up to 3rd and only a point off the automatic promotion spots! More importantly though, we are 9 points clear of 7th now as we really ramp up our bid to make the playoffs (again) at least this season! We now have the best attack in the league as well, with 52 goals scored, but the weird thing is I feel we should have scored more than this with the amount of chances we create in some of our games!
Premier League opposition in the form of Burnley were our 3rd round competitors in the FA Cup, and the gulf between the two sides was clear to see as they absolutely battered us! We've fallen at the first hurdle in both cup competitions this season, which is bitterly disappointing for us and our fans!
We really have to be winning games like this against teams in the relegation zone! The only real positive I can take from this game is the fact the Novakovich gave me a goal and man of the match performance after I handed him a rare start!
Not good enough! Another game we should have won where we have to settle for a single point! Must do better lads!
A comfortable victory over Rotherham as we get back to winning ways! They used to be our bogey team, but we seem to have left those days well behind us now, having won our last 4 games against them now!
Left back, Mark Kitching, is going to miss a few weeks of action!
Fulham are definitely underachieving this year as they sat 12th coming into this game, but I still didn't expect this to be such an easy win! Not complaining though....we were ****** brilliant!
Now Fulham might be underachieving, but Bournemouth are something else! Considering they were one of the hot favourites to win the league, they actually find themselves in a relegation battle, and we heaped more misery on them here with a comfortable win! A great performance from my lads!
We definitely rode our luck on the way to victory in this game! Following the sending off of Darnell Fisher just after the hour mark, we then gave away a penalty (which they missed) and then Eloy Gonzalez goal to seal the win was very much handed to us by the Birmingham keeper who had a moment of madness and tried to dribble out of his goal, only to be tackled by Gonzalez who had an open net to tap into!
A routine win over a Charlton side that are rooted to the bottom of the table and look destined for the drop this season! They could only muster up a couple of shots against us here whilst we created nearly 30 chances on their goal!
After only recently returning from his last injury, Nacer Chadli will now face another 6 weeks on the sidelines! Safe to say his contract won't be renewed at the end of the season!
An Eloy Gonzalez double fired us on our way to a 6th victory in a row against Reading! One thing we are doing exceptionally well at the moment is limiting the amount of chances the opposition creates!
With 10 games of the season remaining, we're up into the automatic promotion places and are the only side that seems to be able to keep up with Brighton and Southampton at the moment! Brighton are only 4 points ahead of us now and we can genuinely consider ourselves title challengers from here on out! A playoff spot looks virtually nailed on for us now with 16 points between us and Huddersfield in 7th!
After picking up a recent long term injury, 35 year old Carl Magnay has decided to retire from playing! A player that has been special for me as one I pinpointed in one of my very first posts as one of my best players, he has remained with me through nearly 6 years and although his appearances have become more scarce as we have risen up the leagues, he has stayed loyal to us and never once complained about his playing time! He will remain on at the club as an U18s coach!
There's no doubt about it, the youth intakes have definitely been the most disappointing thing of this entire save!
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