About Last Night.... what have we learnt?

By Albatross
July 21 2005

Hartlepool United won last night's friendly with Middlesbrough, and won it well. Our opponents were a long way from being full strength, the majority of the first team having gone up to Scotland for the game with Hearts, but we still learnt a few things about formations and players at Victoria Park.

While the 3-0 win is of course nice, I don't think too much can be read into the scoreline - after all, our opponents were effectively a reserve or youth team with the odd "name" thrown in like Nemeth and Doriva. Of much more interest was the formation.

Scott started with 3-5-2, with Humphreys and Eifion Williams acting as wing-backs; meanwhile the centre of midfield started with a highly attack-minded trio of Sweeney, Bullock and Llewellyn. Is this the system he will be going for come the start of the new season? If it is, then the onus is on those three players to make sure they help out defensively when needed as well.

There were certainly plenty of positives to come out of the game, with Darrell Clarke receiving a great reception when he came on as sub and then netting the third goal, Carl Jones given an opportunity to show his paces, Chris Llewellyn's opening goal and a performance to suggest he's well worth what we've paid for him, and all in all Pools looking pretty together.

Meanwhile it looks like the chances of Michael Bridges arriving at Pools are receding. It seems that he's talking to a heck of a lot of clubs - Bristol City are the latest reportedly interested - and with Pools seeming to have a full complement of strikers in any case he may prefer to go somewhere where there's a little less competition for a place.

At Pools though, even without Bridges the feeling is that we're a side that's capable of going places. The squad looks strong, with some quality additions to a side that has been in the top six for the last two years, and the talk is not of getting into the playoffs again but of taking a step up from there into contention for automatic promotion. Is that over-optimistic? Until we actually see how good some of the other contenders are, we won't know: but we certainly have grounds for optimism.