Managerial Merry-Go-Round 2020/21

[Sestonpoolie]

Don’t worry Poolies, we will give Challinor the welcome he deserves when he comes to Blundell Park in April.

And best of luck winning the title.

 

[GTFCfish]

And best of luck winning the title.

Unfortunately we won’t be winning it without a proper goalscorer but I don’t see Stockport winning it either.
Chesterfield’a title for me.

 

[E10rifle]

He has one of the most exciting jobs in the lower leagues if he can get us his promoted.

With 10 seasons resulting in a playoff final, silverware, or a promotion, he probably backs himself to do it.

Astounding how a few quid suddenly makes a fanbase go all Bertie Big Bollox. You’re fucking Stockport, bud. There’s nothing even remotely exciting about you. You have a shit ground in the arse-end of Manchester and your claims to fame are a) one good cup run 25 years ago and b) generally being slightly more successful than Rochdale. Your best ever player is - no laughing in the back - Kevin Francis. So wind it in at least until you’ve worked out how to finish above Boreham Wood, eh?

 

[Ellis]

Astounding how a few quid suddenly makes a fanbase go all Bertie Big Bollox. You’re fucking Stockport, bud. There’s nothing even remotely exciting about you. You have a shit ground in the arse-end of Manchester and your claims to fame are a) one good cup run 25 years ago and b) generally being slightly more successful than Rochdale. Your best ever player is - no laughing in the back - Kevin Francis. So wind it in at least until you’ve worked out how to finish above Boreham Wood, eh?

Not sure how it is bertie big bollox to state fact that if we can stop flapping around like a beached whale and get out of the National League we are an exciting proposition most managers would want.

You clearly have no idea the transformative impact our owner has had on the football club over the last 18 months. We have championship style facilities, a large budget, club already laying down the groundworks in the community and our owner has recently purchased Stockport Town to use for youth prospects/academy if we can get back to the Football League. The same will goes for Wrexham. Complete head in the sand moment from you to think otherwise.

I understand we're still in non-league, it's the hardest division to get out of; but once we are in the FL any manager comes here will have the best backing out of the bottom two EFL divisions.

Clearly Challinor can see that more than some bitter Orient fan on a football forum. Hopefully we will be seeing the home of football that is the 'Breyer Group Stadium' soon.

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

In fairness a lot of the time these big ‘ambitions’ last for about 5-7 years then sink normally with club in mass debts and fans telling us they never knew the club was ever overspending and debt wasn’t their fault until it gets sold again and demands for mass spending arise again from the fan base……….happened everywhere since the early 90’s and apart from really Wigan (where cycle happens all the time) Fulham, hull and Bournemouth and well fleetwood (as you could say L2 is equiverlant to their premiership) it rarely lasts.

wrexham and Stockport are at the start of that cycle, of course it will mean managers and players go to them using probably ‘ambition’ as their usual go to word for joining…….it is the cycle of football.

managers do t need to give any loyalty because apart from Coleman at Accrington every single club would ditch and turn on their manager at a whim of it went wrong, loyalty from fan’s and clubs doesn’t exist anymore…..if managers get a chance of money backing and better players it’s a fair reason to leave.

 

[Deepcut Cobbler]

Not sure how it is bertie big bollox to state fact that if we can stop flapping around like a beached whale and get out of the National League we are an exciting proposition most managers would want.

You clearly have no idea the transformative impact our owner has had on the football club over the last 18 months. We have championship style facilities, a large budget, club already laying down the groundworks in the community and our owner has recently purchased Stockport Town to use for youth prospects/academy if we can get back to the Football League. The same will goes for Wrexham. Complete head in the sand moment from you to think otherwise.

I understand we're still in non-league, it's the hardest division to get out of; but once we are in the FL any manager comes here will have the best backing out of the bottom two EFL divisions.

Clearly Challinor can see that more than some bitter Orient fan on a football forum. Hopefully we will be seeing the home of football that is the 'Breyer Group Stadium' soon.

Still bigger than Salford?

 

[shoddycollins]

Still bigger than Salford?

Speaking of whom, Graham Alexander must be furious looking at how much time Gary Bowyer has been given and where they are in the league.

 

[Stocky]

Live footage of Challinor leaving Jeff Stelling's House...

Stelling named his cat after Challinor

 

[Stocky]

And as for Leyton Orient, anyone who's ever been there know it's a fact that 80% of their supporters are anoraks who stink of piss.

The professional London football scene is dead as it is without wanting to go and follow Leyton Orient.

 

[E10rifle]

Not sure how it is bertie big bollox to state fact that if we can stop flapping around like a beached whale and get out of the National League we are an exciting proposition most managers would want.

You clearly have no idea the transformative impact our owner has had on the football club over the last 18 months. We have championship style facilities, a large budget, club already laying down the groundworks in the community and our owner has recently purchased Stockport Town to use for youth prospects/academy if we can get back to the Football League. The same will goes for Wrexham. Complete head in the sand moment from you to think otherwise.

I understand we're still in non-league, it's the hardest division to get out of; but once we are in the FL any manager comes here will have the best backing out of the bottom two EFL divisions.

Clearly Challinor can see that more than some bitter Orient fan on a football forum. Hopefully we will be seeing the home of football that is the 'Breyer Group Stadium' soon.

And as for Leyton Orient, anyone who's ever been there know it's a fact that 80% of their supporters are anoraks who stink of piss.

The professional London football scene is dead as it is without wanting to go and follow Leyton Orient.

Uh oh lads, the Berties are coming for me! I think they might be as MASSIVE as BRovers after all.

 

[Soup Ladle]

Astounding how a few quid suddenly makes a fanbase go all Bertie Big Bollox. You’re fucking Stockport, bud. There’s nothing even remotely exciting about you. You have a shit ground in the arse-end of Manchester and your claims to fame are a) one good cup run 25 years ago and b) generally being slightly more successful than Rochdale. Your best ever player is - no laughing in the back - Kevin Francis. So wind it in at least until you’ve worked out how to finish above Boreham Wood, eh?

You should see their fans on social media, BiG cLuB, twice the size of Pools, biggest potential outside of the Championship etc blah blah. Aye, right. Like the six years of regional leagues, part time status never happened. And they're still non league. We're all small clubs in the grand scheme.

 

[MadJohn]

I'm happy to wake up on a new day after 36 hours of our fans soiling themselves in public. A bunch of rarfs (hopefully not adults) actually set fire to a Dave Challinor flag behind the main stand at our pizza match last night. Yes, really.

We hadn't mustered anything remotely resembling a promotion challenge in the two and bit years since leaving the EFL (or any of the decade that preceded the relegation). If anything we looked more likely to be relegated again. We were potless, and the club came perilously close to folding. The town was apathetic. After rallying themselves for a Save United Day in 2017, when close to 7000 attended a match at the Vic (with help gratefully received from Middlesbrough fans), the fans faded away again. Sub 3000 crowds were the norm, with an embarrassing low-point of just 1721, coincidentally against (of course!) Challinor's Fylde. The Vic was an often poisonous place on matchdays. A vocal bunch of our fans in the main stand had a massive chip on their shoulders about being non-league and having to lower ourselves to play clubs we'd never had to play before. There was a rinse-and-repeat feels to home games when we played "tinpot non-league clubs". I must have watched the same game about ten times, a 0-1 or 0-2 defeat to Ebbsfleet, Dover, Solihull, or Guiseley. Opponents would stay in the game, waste a bit of time, wait for the crowd to cut up nasty, nick a goal, take the points.

Defeat in that Fylde match cost Matty Bates his job. We replaced him with Richard Money. Money soon got spooked by the size of the task as he realised he'd bitten off more than he could chew. He swapped jobs with DoF Craig Hignett and left the club entirely shortly afterwards following an argument with a fan in a chip shop. Hignett lasted another 30 odd games of more of the same. The nadir was another listless 0-2 home defeat to Dover, this time marred by racist abuse and a genuinely nasty atmosphere in which the player who had been abused and two of his (black) teammates continued to be booed every time they touched the ball. I could only stomach an hour. To this day a lot of our fans nurse a bitter dislike for Dover, blaming them for the events of that day. Hignett limped on another few weeks before losing his job after defeat at (of course!) Stockport. We were a mess. We were 16th in the National League. This was two years ago.

Then we went for Challinor. He gave us some pride back, some fun. We won 4-1 at Yeovil, 5-1 at Chesterfield, we won four home games on the spin. We were inching up the table, crowds were nudging back up towards 4000. Then the pandemic hit and the season ended early. We were 9th, adjusted to 12th on PPG but still our first top half finish in any division since 2007. We never got to see the steady growth of attendances over the next year because there were no fans at games, but the buzz around the town was palpable. We had bad days (0-5 v Torquay was last year's Halloween treat to match this year's v Orient) but the trend was only in one direction. We did promotion the hard way, coming through three one-off matches at different venues. That day in Bristol will live long in the memory of all Pools fans, even those who had to make do with TV. The step up to the EFL is tough, especially with a thin and depleted squad, but we've coped just fine so far and our record in our last 22 home league games, a run stretching back to December 2020, is 19-2-1. The Vic is often bouncing on match days. Attendances are back up in the 5000+ region, and away attendances are way up as well. Challinor leaves with the best overall EFL/NL win percentage of any manager in the history of HUFC.

He took over Pools when we were at one of our lowest ebbs. In two years he has taken us to promotion and left us 30 places higher in the pyramid, a much more attractive proposition than he found us. He may well have recognised the limit to which he thought he could take HUFC, and has backed himself to drop down a division and do it again, at a club that has a better infrastructure (not hard to find to be fair), while providing a more settled family life. None of us were present in any intra- or inter-club talks in the last few days. We don't know who said what to who and when. Without certainty we can only speculate. It's a shame that, amid all of the rat and snake emojis, the flag-burning and talks of greedy scumbags, you can find so few words of gratitude.

 

[Soup Ladle]

Care to expand on this disagreement?

They'd been at loggerheads over allsorts that I know. Budget, staff, contract, signings. Whether something blew up in the last week I don't know. Move on, get over it. I've accepted it. Let's hope Raj opens the chequebook for the next bloke, I'd like us to get the Halifax manager. Failing that Keith Hill or Mike Flynn would be good shouts. Not sure on Hill's style of football though.

 

[Grumpy Grecian]

Hopefully we will be seeing the home of football that is the 'Breyer Group Stadium' soon.

Sorry, but can't see that happening.
No chance of Orient being relegated (this season)

 

[RiftHouseLad]

I'm happy to wake up on a new day after 36 hours of our fans soiling themselves in public. A bunch of rarfs (hopefully not adults) actually set fire to a Dave Challinor flag behind the main stand at our pizza match last night. Yes, really.

We hadn't mustered anything remotely resembling a promotion challenge in the two and bit years since leaving the EFL (or any of the decade that preceded the relegation). If anything we looked more likely to be relegated again. We were potless, and the club came perilously close to folding. The town was apathetic. After rallying themselves for a Save United Day in 2017, when close to 7000 attended a match at the Vic (with help gratefully received from Middlesbrough fans), the fans faded away again. Sub 3000 crowds were the norm, with an embarrassing low-point of just 1721, coincidentally against (of course!) Challinor's Fylde. The Vic was an often poisonous place on matchdays. A vocal bunch of our fans in the main stand had a massive chip on their shoulders about being non-league and having to lower ourselves to play clubs we'd never had to play before. There was a rinse-and-repeat feels to home games when we played "tinpot non-league clubs". I must have watched the same game about ten times, a 0-1 or 0-2 defeat to Ebbsfleet, Dover, Solihull, or Guiseley. Opponents would stay in the game, waste a bit of time, wait for the crowd to cut up nasty, nick a goal, take the points.

Defeat in that Fylde match cost Matty Bates his job. We replaced him with Richard Money. Money soon got spooked by the size of the task as he realised he'd bitten off more than he could chew. He swapped jobs with DoF Craig Hignett and left the club entirely shortly afterwards following an argument with a fan in a chip shop. Hignett lasted another 30 odd games of more of the same. The nadir was another listless 0-2 home defeat to Dover, this time marred by racist abuse and a genuinely nasty atmosphere in which the player who had been abused and two of his (black) teammates continued to be booed every time they touched the ball. I could only stomach an hour. To this day a lot of our fans nurse a bitter dislike for Dover, blaming them for the events of that day. Hignett limped on another few weeks before losing his job after defeat at (of course!) Stockport. We were a mess. We were 16th in the National League. This was two years ago.

Then we went for Challinor. He gave us some pride back, some fun. We won 4-1 at Yeovil, 5-1 at Chesterfield, we won four home games on the spin. We were inching up the table, crowds were nudging back up towards 4000. Then the pandemic hit and the season ended early. We were 9th, adjusted to 12th on PPG but still our first top half finish in any division since 2007. We never got to see the steady growth of attendances over the next year because there were no fans at games, but the buzz around the town was palpable. We had bad days (0-5 v Torquay was last year's Halloween treat to match this year's v Orient) but the trend was only in one direction. We did promotion the hard way, coming through three one-off matches at different venues. That day in Bristol will live long in the memory of all Pools fans, even those who had to make do with TV. The step up to the EFL is tough, especially with a thin and depleted squad, but we've coped just fine so far and our record in our last 22 home league games, a run stretching back to December 2020, is 19-2-1. The Vic is often bouncing on match days. Attendances are back up in the 5000+ region, and away attendances are way up as well. Challinor leaves with the best overall EFL/NL win percentage of any manager in the history of HUFC.

He took over Pools when we were at one of our lowest ebbs. In two years he has taken us to promotion and left us 30 places higher in the pyramid, a much more attractive proposition than he found us. He may well have recognised the limit to which he thought he could take HUFC, and has backed himself to drop down a division and do it again, at a club that has a better infrastructure (not hard to find to be fair), while providing a more settled family life. None of us were present in any intra- or inter-club talks in the last few days. We don't know who said what to who and when. Without certainty we can only speculate. It's a shame that, amid all of the rat and snake emojis, the flag-burning and talks of greedy scumbags, you can find so few words of gratitude.

Well said Sir.

I will always be grateful to DC.

The things we hear about his family recieving typed abuse, Is disgusting and shows a lack of understanding
About football and more importantly and worrying about life.

I would have done exactly the same as DC and i was born and bred in the town.
The Stockport Job is a massive undertaking, Yet people really think its easy because they have financial backing.
But so called supporters don,t even realise the expectation at Stockport is massive and will be
Extremely difficult to deliver.

I wish Dave all the very best in his new role.

But and no disrespect to the Stockport fans you really need to come togeather and support the
Lads on the pitch as we have done, And we only achieved that because of Dave Challinor.

Thank you for all you did DC.

 

[Razzmachaz]

All is not lost there is always The King Lord and Savior.....Mr Craig Harrison.

 

[RiftHouseLad]

All is not lost there is always The King Lord and Savior.....Mr Craig Harrison.

CH was a patsy.

 

[shoddycollins]

CH was a patsy.

Still, I would like to see a comment on this from Craig Harrison himself. I hear one of the Hartlepool fans knows how to get in touch.

 

[Chief Rocka]

Still, I would like to see a comment on this from Craig Harrison himself. I hear one of the Hartlepool fans knows how to get in touch.

He doesn't have much free time these days, currently the Chief Shaman of Connah's Quay Nomads.

 

[EricSabin]

Speaking of whom, Graham Alexander must be furious looking at how much time Gary Bowyer has been given and where they are in the league.

That thought crossed my mind watching their highlights Saturday, 4 wins in 15 in the league…

 

[GEORGE]

Not sure how it is bertie big bollox to state fact that if we can stop flapping around like a beached whale and get out of the National League we are an exciting proposition most managers would want.

You clearly have no idea the transformative impact our owner has had on the football club over the last 18 months. We have championship style facilities, a large budget, club already laying down the groundworks in the community and our owner has recently purchased Stockport Town to use for youth prospects/academy if we can get back to the Football League. The same will goes for Wrexham. Complete head in the sand moment from you to think otherwise.

I understand we're still in non-league, it's the hardest division to get out of; but once we are in the FL any manager comes here will have the best backing out of the bottom two EFL divisions.

Clearly Challinor can see that more than some bitter Orient fan on a football forum. Hopefully we will be seeing the home of football that is the 'Breyer Group Stadium' soon.

Some of this I agree with. I don't blame you at all for trying to get back into the FL . And if it takes an owner to splash the cash then so be it. But you saying you will have the best backing for any manager in the bottom two divs I'm not so sure. As a club we are currently backed by a Jordanion Multi millionaire who in the summer wrote off 21Mill of debt and I suspect there are richer guys than him in the bottom two divs. Anyway good luck as it will be good tosee your club back in the FL.

 

[shoddycollins]

Some of this I agree with. I don't blame you at all for trying to get back into the FL . And if it takes an owner to splash the cash then so be it. But you saying you will have the best backing for any manager in the bottom two divs I'm not so sure. As a club we are currently backed by a Jordanion Multi millionaire who in the summer wrote off 21Mill of debt and I suspect there are richer guys than him in the bottom two divs. Anyway good luck as it will be good tosee your club back in the FL.

Also, owner wealth isn't the be all and end all... granted our ownership situation is a little bit... er... fooked, but the man who has invested in the club, regularly sits in the directors box, pays David Holsworth's salary and may or may not be pulling the strings has a net worth of £1.1 billion, yet we have one of the lowest budgets in the division.

Some United fans would like for him to properly buy out our current owners, take an active role in the club and start using his money to build the club up instead of just throwing in bits and pieces here and there, I think a lot would like that given how rich he is, but personally I think he's part of the problem... said he doesn't even like football and only put money into the club because most of his staff support them, then made most of said staff redundant, may or may not still own Edinburgh Woolen Mill as the true owners are obscured by a clusterfuck of holding companies and just in general he's a shadowy figure who can kindly do one.

 

[Soup Ladle]

Challinor departs Victoria Park to return to the National League

Yesterday, Stockport County announced that they had appointed Hartlepool United boss Dave Challinor as their new manager on a two-and-a-half-year deal, returning to the club which he made 81 appear…

offtheline599656488.wordpress.com

Some interesting names on this, but depends if the club are willing to pay compo.

 

[shoddycollins]

Challinor departs Victoria Park to return to the National League

Yesterday, Stockport County announced that they had appointed Hartlepool United boss Dave Challinor as their new manager on a two-and-a-half-year deal, returning to the club which he made 81 appear…

offtheline599656488.wordpress.com

Some interesting names on this, but depends if the club are willing to pay compo.

While everyone praises Wild for the job he did at Halifax, I think the job he did at Oldham can't be overlooked.

 

[Vanni]

What's this guff that I'm coming across all over social media? 'Biggest potential outside the Championship' when talking about Stockport is utterly ridiculous. Well for a start there's Bradford, Brovers and to a lesser extent Carlisle and Port Vale in L2. The latter two clubs are not what I would call big clubs but if Vale do go up and be competitive in L1 then I think they should be able to double what they're getting through the gates at present. OTOH, Carlisle aren't surrounded by a plethora of clubs so any fan wanting to watch FL footy has only got one option and that's to go to Brunton Park. And what about all the big clubs in L1........

Moving onto another topic, my personal opinion about promotion from the national League is slightly controversial and at odds with most others. The popular idea is that it's the hardest division to get out of and I do get that - there's just the two spots up for grabs. But there's also another argument to be made and that is the fact that the NL is only the fifth tier of English football and if you're any decent then getting out of it should be easier than getting out of the fourth tier or the third etc irrespective of the number of promotion spots. Please note the emphasis on the words if you're any decent.

 

[denzel ecfc]

What's this guff that I'm coming across all over social media? 'Biggest potential outside the Championship' when talking about Stockport is utterly ridiculous. Well for a start there's Bradford, Brovers and to a lesser extent Carlisle and Port Vale in L2. The latter two clubs are not what I would call big clubs but if Vale do go up and be competitive in L1 then I think they should be able to double what they're getting through the gates at present. OTOH, Carlisle aren't surrounded by a plethora of clubs so any fan wanting to watch FL footy has only got one option and that's to go to Brunton Park. And what about all the big clubs in L1........

Moving onto another topic, my personal opinion about promotion from the national League is slightly controversial and at odds with most others. The popular idea is that it's the hardest division to get out of and I do get that - there's just the two spots up for grabs. But there's also another argument to be made and that is the fact that the NL is only the fifth tier of English football and if you're any decent then getting out of it should be easier than getting out of the fourth tier or the third etc irrespective of the number of promotion spots. Please note the emphasis on the words if you're any decent.

You've never been there. Trust me, its tough. Even Luton were down there for 5 seasons.

 

[Soup Ladle]

You've never been there. Trust me, its tough. Even Luton were down there for 5 seasons.

Erm Cambridge were there for about 9 years

 

[Vanni]

Erm Cambridge were there for about 9 years

Nope never happened. Fake news.

 

[Indian Dan]

Some of this I agree with. I don't blame you at all for trying to get back into the FL . And if it takes an owner to splash the cash then so be it. But you saying you will have the best backing for any manager in the bottom two divs I'm not so sure. As a club we are currently backed by a Jordanion Multi millionaire who in the summer wrote off 21Mill of debt and I suspect there are richer guys than him in the bottom two divs. Anyway good luck as it will be good tosee your club back in the FL.

We’ve got fuck all backing but are doing fine.

It doesn’t matter a jot how much any owner is worth, it’s whether he/she is prepared to spend it and spend it wisely.

Your fella is hardly a shining example of a wealthy owner spending wisely - or, more precisely, allowing someone else spending his money wisely.

Christ, Lee Power was a multi millionaire. He was never going to waste his own money on the club.

 

[Razzmachaz]

Speaking of whom, Graham Alexander must be furious looking at how much time Gary Bowyer has been given and where they are in the league.

Getting rid of Graham Alexander was a woeful decision from people who should know better. They have been slowly floating backwards ever since. GNev even admitted on live telly that it was a massive mistake. Bowyer must be under the cosh now. It's all things you love to see though