Sweens - fit?

By Clarence Rode
January 11 2009

Hartlepool's League One game at Oldham has been switched to Monday night after a frozen pitch killed off hgopes of playing the game on Saturday. The change might not please fans who like to travel on a weekend, but playing the game quickly will help ease a potential fixtures backlog and give a couple of injured players more time to recover.

Antony Sweeney and Michael Maidens both went off inside rhe first half-hour of the FA Cup win against Stoke and were rated as doubtful for Saturday's game.The extra two days could help Sweeney, and possibly even Mackay, to recover.
Pools' FA Cup run is earning the club a lot of extra cash, but it also means fixtures are buiulding up and there are many midweek games to be played in the second half of the season.
The home game with Leicester (Tue Feb 17) and the away game against Swindon (Tue Feb 24) have both got new dates, meaning that Pools have seven games to play in February.
Meanwhile, there is no sign yet of any activity in the transfer market, with caretaker boss Chris Turner saying he expects a flurry of activity late in January as selling and buying clubs suddenly hit the panic buttons.
Already £300,000 up thais season thanks to the Cup run, though down on gate receipts, Pools have some compensation as the credit crunch shows signs of hitting football as well as everything else. But owners IOR run a tight financial operation - don't xpect Turner to be given the cash to do anything silly.
Like signing players who can't play.