Howard - hit post

By Charlie Summerbell
August 19 2012

Hartlepool United gave boss Neale Cooper the improvement he called for as they opened their League One season with a goalless draw at home to Swindon ... but they might still have lost.

The five-goal League Cup humiliation at Crewe was still fresh in the mind as Pools defended a lot better against Swindon, but they had former Victoria Park star Tommy Miller to thank for their point.

He took Swindon’s penalty midway through the second half and missed so badly that nobody would have guessed he had never missed from the spot in more than 40 previous attempts.

That let Pools off the hook, but there were escapes for Swindon, too, most notably when Steve Howard’s header came back off the post, also in the second half.

It was certainly a far better showing than at Crewe, but there still wasn’t a lot there to suggest that Pools can prove wrong those “experts” who say they are going to struggle this season.

Several national newspapers who have produced previews of the League One season predict that Pools are relegation candidates – predictions which would carry more weight if those who wrote the previews had actually SEEN Cooper’s men in action and weren’t just basing their ideas on bookies’ odds or the old “Pools always struggle” theory.

“I asked them for a response, and they were really good,” Cooper told the club website. “We perhaps rode out luck at times, but I felt we earned that by defending well.

“Overall I think that was a really good performance on the back of last week’s disappointment.”

The big question now is: which is the real Pools? We might get a clearer picture in Tuesday night’s League One visit to Gary Liddle’s Notts County, who kicked their season off with a 2-1 win … at Crewe.