Decision time for Turner as Pools face crisis

If Hartlepool United’s alleged senior players had shown the same drive and commitment at Yeovil at the weekend as the reserves did in beating a Joey Barton XI posing as Newcastle United Reserves at Victoria Park on Tuesday night, there’s no doubt at all they wouldn’t have been stuffed 4-0.

The Reserves beat their barcode counterparts 2-0, Michael Mackay and Colin Larkin scoring the goals and Barton obligingly missing a penalty in front of more media representatives than reserve fixtures usually attract.
Now boss Chris Turner has a number of questions to answer – in fact, apart from goalkeeper, he has a full team of decisions to make – before Friday night’s vital League One visit to Tranmere, where it’s going to be a real battle for survival as both team hover dangerously close to the drop zone.
Stockport and Wycombe are probably already down, but both Exeter and Southend will entertain ambitions of staging a great escape, and there are certainly enough matches left for them to close the five-point gap on the likes of Pools and Gillingham.

It feels as if all season Turner and the more optimistic fans have been saying that Pools won’t be in trouble this season because they are too good for that and they have had a difficult run of fixtures against some of the big guns to be found in League One this season.
Well, it turns out that that theory was a load of old rubbish – Pools are just above the drop zone because that is where they deserve to be and that is where their results and performances have dumped them.

If they don’t get a result at Tranmere, the alarm bells really will be ringing and the pressure will really be on for the last ten games of the season.
That ten-game run starts with the rearranged visit to Southampton, where a point would be welcome and a win miraculous on current form, but the rest of them are against sides Pools can beat, matches against Wycombe, Stockport and Exeter all must-wins.