Preview: Stockport County v Hartlepool United

By Albatross
February 25 2005

Hartlepool United travel to Stockport with both sides keen to pick up three points. There will be some reunions as former Pools management team Chris Turner and Colin West hope their new side will overcome their former one - while we of course have Jon Daly returning to take on his old colleagues.

To say that Stockport's current predicament in dire is something of an understatement; they are 14 points away from safety with a vastly inferior goal difference and have just 12 games to try and turn things round. Since Turner took over just before Christmas they have won just two league games - but that's not necessarily a decline as they've only won five times all season!

The seeds of the current discontent don't lie with Turner - and although Sammy McIlroy has come in for some criticism, the real problem in the eyes of many fans is the club's owners. Cheshire Sports, who also own Sale Sharks, haven't exactly been forthcoming with funds, and CT is having to scratch around for free transfers and loan signings to flesh his squad out a bit. Even so this sesaon there have been a lot of departures - since the first game of the season Aaron Lescott, Derek Geary, Luke Beckett, Andy Welsh, Owen Morrison, Fraser McLachlan, Lee Mair, Rickie Lambert and of course Jon Daly have all left the club for good while coming in have been Chris Armstrong (from Queen of the South), Keith Briggs, and several loan players including Darrell Clarke but currently consisting of Joe Dolan (Millwall), Kevan Hurst (Sheff Utd) and Harpal Singh (Leeds). Meanwhile the want-away Marc Bridge-Wilkinson - one of McIlroy's summer signings - has joined Bradford on loan, and Warren Feeney is also rumoured to be on his way out of the club.

Feeney meanwhile is the leading scorer at the club with 12 (10 League), and the gap left by Beckett is shown by the fact that he's still the next highest scorer for the Hatters with 7 despite having left three months ago. In short, they're looking pretty toothless up front - and are leaking a lot of goals at the back as well, with 71 conceded already - more than two per game.

There were some signs of life last weekend though with a decent enough 2-1 win over the rapidly disintegrating Oldham - only to come down to earth with a bump with a 2-1 home defeat to Chesterfield on Tuesday. They have yet to go more than two successive league games unbeaten, have not managed to follow up a win with anything other than a defeat, and look unlikely to go on the sort of run that might even give them a chance of avoiding relegation. It's all very depressing at Edgeley Park at the moment - for fans of the Football Club at least.

Pools meanwhile seem to be riding on the crest of a wave with the Playoffs looking well within our grasp and automatic promotion not out of the question - it could hardly be more different. Neale Cooper's Fans Forum this week was full of laughing and joking, and only reinforced his popularity and reputation with the Pools fans - his comments about his reasons for not signing Shuker and Betsy, and determination to make sure that players will fit in with the rest of the squad off the field as well as on it, have won him much deserved praise. And Cooper will know that this sort of game is the sort of one we have to take three points from to be considered realistic promotion challengers. The fans may be looking ahead to the clashes with Hull and Tranmere - but for those matches to be as meaningful as we hope they will be, first of all we need to take as many points as possible from the games leading up to them. Meanwhile Stockport may know that the fat lady is already doing her warm-up exercises, but that's not going to stop them trying to make her wait as long as possible before she breaks into song.

Neither side has new injury problems coming into this game, and it may be that both teams will be unchanged from midweek. Chris Westwood was hoping to be fit, but with Pools producing such a good performance in midweek he's unlikely to be risked even if he's available.

Prediction time is here again, and it's hard to see beyond another win for Hartlepool United. I'll go for 2-1, with Porter and Boyd sending us home happy once again.