Warren — FM 2011 Hartlepool United March 2010/11

Hi all and welcome back to yet another edition of this Hartlepool story we are now in March and hoping that we can find the form that we had at the start of the season as the last two months have been a bit of a failure. With five game in all this month it was time to get the ball rolling when we face in the first game of March.

V Carlisle (h) 5^th Mar 2011

The first game saw us at home against Carlisle which can be sort of called a derby but it’s more of a fact that the two teams are close geographically rather than a big rivalry. With home advantage I was looking for three points.

This looked likely when we went 2-0 up with both goals coming from James Brown within the first 20 minutes of the match. The game finished in a 2-2 draw and again we weren’t able to hold a lead with Francois Zoko (who Johnny Karp may remember from his Notts County story last season) scored in both the 31^st and in injury time in the second half. Again this was annoying as we had loads of chances to win the game.

V Oldham (a) 8^th Mar 2011

We were continuing our run of from that we had been getting in the last two previous months and it needed to stop soon or we would risk not being in the championship next season.

And today wasn’t going to be the day in which we solved our problems as we were second best and lost the game 2-0 thanks to some poor defending and an Oldham side who played really well on the day. We were slipping away from the promotion places.

V Yeovil (h) 12^th Mar 2011

We could afford not getting three points from this game as well so I chanced the formation to 4-3-3 and played Vuckic, Brown and Donaldson up front. This could be a risk and it could back fire but I had another confidence in the front three to get us the three points that we so desperately needed.

I was thrilled at the end of the game as we picked up our first win of the month and I was pleased that we did it so emphatically winning 4-1 with goals coming from top scorer Vuckic, Lowry and Monkhouse getting a brace.

V Bournemouth (a) 19^th Mar 2011

Would the performance in the last game spur our team to another win and keep the promotion spot race going for longer.

The answer was no and it was back to the Hartlepool of late in which we would play some nice football but shoot ourselves in the foot by doing something stupid or not taking our chances. This time defensive errors let in Benedict Akwuegbu score to goals in give Bournemouth a 2-1 win.

V Huddersfield (h) 30^th Mar 2011

A bit of inconsistency was starting to show from my Hartlepool players and it seemed to reminded my of a Newcastle side that I was following at the moment where they can delight you with a brilliant performance when you think they will just roll over and lose or play poor when you expect to win. I wonder which Hartlepool side was going to turn up this week.

Fortunately it was the side that likes to win and win well. Against a Huddersfield who were starting to breath down our necks it was the perfect result to finish off the month with goals coming from Vuckic and a Jamie McCombe own goal.

March Results

Again 2 wins out of 5 games isn’t the form of a team who wants to be promoted a poor month against poorer opposition. I am trying to take positives out of this month and the fact that there is still 6 games left of the season and we still have a game in hand against Southampton.

Table

There was now an 8 point gap between 2^nd and 3^rd place but like I said before we have a game more to play and also have to play Southampton in one of the six games we have left so hopefully promotion is certainly not out of the question

Performance of the Month

There was only really one stand out winner from this game and that has to be the 4-0 win over Yeovil. We have now played Yeovil twice this season and scored a total of 7 goals and only conceding twice.

Thanks for reading

Warren