Warren — FM 2011 Hartlepool United End of Season 2011/12

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well and excited for the Christmas period. Welcome back to the final instalment of my Hartlepool’s 2011/12 Championship campaign. For anyone that doesn’t know with only three months left of the season and 16 games to play my Hartlepool side were in the play-off places in 5^th position and I was hoping to be able to hang onto this place and have a crack at getting into the Premier League. So let’s get down to business and talk about my February results.

February Results

If I was going to get one of these play-off places I would need to put a good sprint finish and get a bit of form going as there was quite a large chasing pack and a lot of teams fighting for the top 6 places. The first game of February set the tone for an awful month and I could believe what was happening in front of me. First of all came a 2-1 loss to Bristol City after we took the lead though Henaini we capitulated and lost the game. Next game was away to Leicester and the errors in the defence were comical and we lost 3-1 and never deserved to get the 1 which was scored by Moore. I then had a tough game to face Blackpool who was relegated the previous season. It was a better performance but that doesn’t really matter when you don’t get anything from the game. Surely thing would pick up soon against Ipswich which in all fairness they did and I got my first point of the month. The final game saw us up against Doncaster and in a much improved performance we managed to run out 4-1 winners.

Performance of the Month

V Doncaster

I don’t think you can have any arguments about the winner this month and it will be the clearest winner you are likely to see. Special thanks have to go to Henaini and Moore who were a real partnership up front and also to James Chester who had an excellent game at the back.

March Results

Hopefully we can have a much better month in March than what we did in February and I surely couldn’t get any worse. There was a long break before our next game for an international match and I was hoping that this would give my players a chance to rest and clear their minds before the next game. First up was Peterborough and the talk about the players to clear their minds backfired as they were half asleep for this game and that 20 minute period at the start of the game proved costly and we lost the game 2-1. If I was ever going to have to break out of this form I would need to do it soon but the likelihood of that happening in the next game was slim as we faced 3^rd in the table. In the end we put up a good fight and game out with an exciting 3-3 draw in which we got a point in the 95th minute. I was looking for my players to take positive from this game and use it in the next one against Burnley and with goals coming from Henaini and Brown that’s exactly what we did and we won 2-0. We now had two tricky away games, the first of which was against table toppers Nottm Forest. In a tight game the leaders ran out two-nil winners and my chances of gaining a play-off spot were quickly descending. The final game was against mine and Darren’s team in Newcastle United who had really struggled the second time back in the championship and had changed their manager 3 times in one season (this sounds awfully familiar). They churned out a 3-1 win and that ended another disappointing month for my team.

Performance of the Month

V Swansea

The second time Swansea had featured this season in POTM. It was a close call between this game and the Burnley match but I had to go for this one as I felt that without this result we wouldn’t have got three points against Burnley.

April Results

The final 5 games of the season are hardly worth talking about as I had failed in my bid to get into the play-off places and my team was shot of any confidence and the season faded away as quickly as saying “promotion”.

One good thing that did come out of this season was that the summer signing of Eyeman Henaini won signing of the season and he ended up being the joint top goalscorer in the league with Marlon Harewood.

Table

After a horrible end to the season I have to say that when this season started way back in August if someone had said to me that I would have been challenging for a play-off spot in my first season in the Championship I would have laughed it off and said it would be untrue.

The fact that we managed to have what was a decent season up until a few months ago. I am proud of my player’s effort this season and I am confident enough that we will give it a much better crack at it next season once I have brought in some new players and developed the squad.

Thanks for reading

Warren