In Hurst I trust

Quoted from pen penfras

Not sure what people expected. We were awful for a large portion of last season, limped into the playoffs and had an absolutely incredible run of one off events that got us promoted and we'll probably never see anything like that again. Without that end, it'd have been a disappointing season.

We have the large majority of that squad playing this season, so it shouldn't be any surprise that it's a disappointing season. It was obvious it was coming. Yet somehow we've managed to have another ridiculous once in a lifetime run in the FA Cup which again makes this season seem better than it really has been.

We showed no ambition in the summer or January. Whether that was Hurst or the budget is difficult to decipher. Hurst shouldn't be sacked. Be it fluke or not, he's just as responsible for the good things as bad. But next season we need to be better than also rans or else things will start to get tetchy again. Goodwill doesn't last forever and the football is shite

Quoted from gtfc_chris

The stats you've used are also a little selective though. By business end of the season, I've taken that to mean the run in and the final games of the season, not the middle of it. You've quoted 14 consecutive games, so I've done the final 14 league games of last season where the stats are W-7, D-4, L-3. This is then followed by the Play-Off games which ultimately read WWW once the ties were settled.

There's no denying that with a much improved middle part of the season where the picture you've painted was true then we may have finished higher but without going back to check the points differential I'd doubt would be enough to claim top spot. But the situation would be the same in that we'd have gone the play off route and what's to say that a different scenario (in terms of opposition played in POs) may have yielded a different result? There's a certain part of me that believes things happen for a reason.

One of the reasons I'm a fan of PH is because of his consistency. You know exactly what you are going to get. His football is not necessarily 'get you off your feet', 90 minutes of pure entertaining bliss football. It's pragmatic and measured, being honest and realistic about what he can achieve with the players available to him in his budget range. It can often make things far less than perfect and we do get the complete backfires from time to time, Hartlepool being right up there with the worst of them. But the flip side is it sometimes pays off, see the Play Offs and Cup run this season, Northampton away, Crewe away.

What you're also likely to get though is progression, however steady or slowly but he rarely takes a team backwards under his tenure. There have been times when he hasn't got the wheel turning like Ipswich and Scunthorpe which we happen to know had issues behind the scenes of their own which no doubt didn't help him.

Since Alan Buckley, how many managers can you look back on and say with confidence they have consistently driven the club forward in every aspect they can control? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

There are thousands of football managers out there who we could take a punt on, a very small few might get instant results and progress us rapidly, but at some point they will reach a plateau or be cherry picked by clubs higher up. The majority of coaches would probably see us tread water or even see us reverse. I was buzzing with Holloways appointment but for me he's up on the list of worst managers we've had come the end, currently topped by Nicky Law.

At a time when we're still very fresh in the hands of new owners who are working to rebuild the club, a manager who can maintain consistency and offer steady, incremental improvements is - in my opinion - a better option than jumping on the management merry-go-round and seeing what happens. Inevitably there will come a time when a change is either needed or enforced upon us but for now, frustrating as one week can be followed by a glorious week the next and the whole rollercoaster in between it I think PH is still the man to take us forward.

Quoted from ginnywings

I'm currently at the past caring stage. Every season seems to include a conversation about the next transfer window being "the one that will take us to the next level", and it never materialises.

2004 since we looked like getting out of this league upwards instead of downward.

I wasn't a PH fan for a long time in his first spell, but he won me over eventually and I have been a supporter of his since. I didn't call for his head last winter when many were saying he should go, and to his credit, he justified that by winning the play offs.

I'm now starting to creep back the other way, and all the things I didn't like about him in his first spell, are starting to annoy me again.

I'm currently at the stage where I will need a lot of convincing to invest in a season ticket for the 23/24 season. I wouldn't mind us losing 4-1 now and again if we actually won a few by the same score. I currently can't see us creating four decent chances in a game, never mind scoring four.

We only just managed to beat Rochdale at home by one goal and they are worse than Hartlepool.

Quoted from DB

12 months ago everybody on here would have taken a mid/lower place in League 2. That is what we have.

Wrexham, Chesterfield, Notts Cty and particularly Iron fans look up to us in envy. After years of under-investment, we are a job in progress, not a finished article. We have good owners and Hurst is a well-respected manager.

You could tell from the way Hurst spoke after the Hartlepool game he was not a happy man. He's not known for criticising players in public but I wouldn't have minded being a fly on the wall at Cheapside yesterday.

Critise Hurst as much as you like but it was his man management and tactics that have got us to where we are today in LEAGUE 2. Yes, things have to change and evolve and Hurst has said previously that he wants a striker and he surely knows the weakness of his squad.

You could tell from his comments at the forum he was disappointed at not bringing in the players he wanted in January; also JS & AP had a reality check that the football business is not like any other type of business. Even Sir Alan Sugar said he wished he had never got involved with Spurs.

So it is " In Hurst I Trust".

Quoted from 123614

OMG, what do you not understand about getting your targets in the transfer windows?  I was explaining this all through the January window, but briefly, it's not a shop where you see what you want and take it off the shelf and pay at the check out.  There is at least one other person to take into account, the player!  I'm not going to explain it all again, but really, it's not rocket science.

Quoted from Bigdog

You can't run a football club on this kind of sentiment. We were on zero points like the rest of the teams in League Two last August. Finishing in the lower third will not help us in the slightest recruitment wise in the summer, it will slow down the development of our squad if we're trying to be progressive. 1878 will be disappointed, PH will be disappointed, the players will be disappointed, so let the fans be disappointed too rather than just being grateful that we're not x, y or z.

Along the years we could have looked at Brighton, Bournemouth, Luton etc etc and said to ourselves, we may be shite but we haven't got the troubles they have. Wrexham and Notts aren't gonna come up next season, finish 18th and thank their lucky stars they're not Chesterfield. It's a very weak mentality to have..

Quoted from DB

You have my sympathy as it reads as if you're depressed. Brighton and Bournemouth are both in the prem and it looks like Luton may join them. Let's hope Hurst gets us out of this league next season.

Quoted from chaos33

I would say that the length of this thread has led quite a few to stray into the realms of overstatement and alarmism.