By Albatross
August 11 2003

Hartlepool United got off to a great start, and it's still a great time to be a Poolie. However, we need to make sure that we don't get too carried away - after all, it's only one game.... One game played, three points won, four goals scored away from home for the first time in years.... it's been a great weekend to be a Hartlepool fan. Add to that the fact that we were missing Tinks and Barron, five players were making their debut and no less than four of them scored, and it's dreamland time.

It also shows a marked change between Neale Cooper's management and Mike Newell's. How many people think that we would have won that game with Newell in charge - even given the same squad? Not many hands raised I suspect. We didn't win an away game after beating a poor Macclesfield side in January, stuck rigidly to 4-4-2, and seemed to have lost the spark. London Road saw a Pools side playing a 3-5-2 formation, showing a never say die spirit, and beating a team that was being talked about as challenging for the playoffs this season.

Not everyone is happy though. Main unofficial Peterborough site posh.net is littered with Posh fans claiming that Pools were poor, and that it's only because of Barry Fry's tactical ineptness that Pools got anything out of the game. Many seem to think that despite taking all the points, Pools will be on their way down come the end of the season. One classic quote from their message board was "In return, Posh's defence gave Pool one goal, Boucaud gave away a silly foul for another, one was offside and the 4th was just stunning. I take nothing away from Pool...."

Sour grapes? No matter what they say there's an element of that. But do they have a point?

In terms of the goals - well, Strachan's Free Kick couldn't have been done better by Beckham; the second goal was well set up by Eifion; the third was no way offside - a quick look at the video courtesy of Pools World reveals a Posh defender playing all of the Pools forwards on when the ball is played - and the fourth was quite simply unstoppable, and the sort of thing Bury fans had told us Nelson was capable of.

Of more concern to me was some of our defending. The penalty may have been dodgy, but I've seen them given for less - for Pools as well as against - and the mix-up for the second was farcical. Williams showed his dark side once again by spilling the ball, and while he may have been hampered by one of his own defenders, one has to ask whether he called for it - and if he did, why his defenders didn't seem to trust him to collect it. The third was also a defensive lapse. We got away with a few of these errors last season as well as being punished for some of them - this year we can expect to find teams being more ruthless and capitalising on our mistakes more often.

We also need to avoid getting too carried away. Yes, we won, but we beat a side that were strictly middle of the road last season, and fielding two players that were both the wrong side of 35 - in sweltering conditions that would test any player's fitness. We only just squeaked past them, and there will be plenty of sterner tests this season. The win is of course welcome, and a good sign in many ways - but it doesn't mean that we're going to be challenging for a playoff place. It may well be that the sixth place we currently occupy is as high as we get.

Am I being pessimistic? Maybe, but I think I'm being more realistic. Also, after the best part of 15 years following Pools, I well know the truth of the saying "one swallow does not a summer make." One win doesn't make me change my expectations for the season; and if we comfortably avoid relegation come the end of the season I'll still be satisfied.