Cooper off to Pars? Not likely!

By Albatross
June 4 2004

With reports all over the place claiming Neale Cooper is interested in the vacant job at Dunferline, will Hartlepool United soon be looking for another manager? Somehow I don't think so - Pools fans should take it as something of a compliment though....

Cooper would certainly be acceptable to many Dunferline fans - he's a former player, and his achievments at Ross County and now Pools stand up well to comparison. How much of the speculation is Paper Talk though? And why would Coops want the job anyway?

Pars fans though would concede that financially Cooper would be walking into a minefield. Cutbacks have been made across the board, and although they may be playing UEFA Cup football next season whoever comes in would do extremely well to get them there again. Fourth in a division of 12 may potentially mean there's room for improvment, but in practice it would take a miracle for them to displace either Old Firm team, never mind both at once - third would be as good as it gets.

The job is also attracting plenty of interest from other candidates including Stan Ternant and (slightly bizarrely) former Spain boss Javier Clemente - though wages would probably be an issue with the manager likely to be wanting more than the players! Cooper hasn't explicitly denied an interest, but despite some of the more lurid headlines has certainly not indicated he's been approached either - he merely stated he was happy at Pools at present, and that he can't do a lot about people linking him to other jobs. In many ways it's a sign of how well Coops is doing for Pools, had we finished mid-table no-one would be talking!

Meanwhile he's getting on with offering contracts, and Paul Robinson has made no secret of his dissappointment at only being offered six months - making it clear that he wants to stay at Pools, but would like a better offer. Cooper though has plenty of other options up front with Williams, Boyd and Porter - and while Robbo looked superb at first and had some decent performances towards the end of the campaign, he faded badly after that early start. He in fact went 21 games without scoring - admittedly many as a late sub, but even so Cooper has good reason for asking him to prove himself again. It would in some ways be a shame if he left - his goals early on kick-started our season - but at the moment it's difficult to imagine him leaving an unfillable void.