Pools have had a bad year

Their moment was gone, and to make matters worse they had strangely sacked manager Neale Cooper three days before the final league game of the season and put Martin Scott in temporary charge.

He was given the job full time but by February of this year he had gone with the side now struggling at the bottom of the league when another promotion push had been expected. By the end of the season they had been relegated and were facing football in the basement division again, three years after winning promotion.

There have been more changes, former boss Chris Turner is back there as Director of Sport whilst Paul Stephenson, in temporary charge in the last few months of last season, has reverted to his role with the youth squad.

That meant another new manager and Danny Wilson got the job after doing the whole of football a massive favour last season by getting Franchise relegated. Well done Danny, but it has been a big drop for the manager who in the late 90s got Barnsley into the Premiership playing like Brazil.

He's had it difficult in the North East, and because of the restrictions on wage bills in League Two (no more than 60% of income) it has meant him being unable to bring in any new players until last week.

The lifting of the restrictions has allowed him to bring in two new players. The first of them was Willie Boland, the former Cardiff midfielder, and a day later they signed Middlesbrough's young defender Gary Liddle.

Their season hasn't got off to the best of starts with just two points from the first four games, drawing at Macclesfield and then at home last Saturday against Torquay.

Click HERE to see all Hartlepool's results this season.

It is an important game for the Clarets, a chance to get ourselves further in the competition and maybe a game against one of the bigger Premiership clubs. We've experienced those sort of games a few times in the last four seasons and won some of them.

Neither of the two new signings featured on Saturday but both are included in the squad for tonight's game, and there could be further good news for Pools with Micky Barron having a chance of returning from a groin injury.

Their one doubt is Joel Porter who picked up a knock to his knee on Saturday but it looks as though he is going to be OK and should start tonight when Wilson will select from:

Dimitrios Konstantopoulos, Darren Williams, Michael Nelson, Ben Clark, Matty Robson, Antony Sweeney, Mark Tinkler, Ritchie Humphreys, Eifion Williams, Joel Porter, James Brown, Jim Provett, Gavin Strachan, Lee Bullock, David Foley, Michael Proctor, Micky Barron, Willie Boland, Gary Liddle.

Click HERE to see the full Hartlepool squad.

Steve Cotterill has said he might ring the changes and there's every chance that some of the players yet to feature this season could get a game. That could mean starts for Stephen Foster and Garreth O'Connor who have had just short substitute appearances, and such as Graham Branch, John McGreal and John Spicer who haven't played at all since the season got underway.

Andy Gray is also back from suspension and he's likely to start although it will be interesting to see how we play it with Kyle Lafferty, his deputy on Saturday, hardly likely to be left out.

We'll select from: Brian Jensen, Frank Sinclair, Wayne Thomas, Michael Duff, Jon Harley, Wade Elliott, Micah Hyde, Chris McCann, Alan Mahon, Steve Jones, Kyle Lafferty, Andy Gray, Stephen Foster, John McGreal, James O'Connor, Garreth O'Connor, John Spicer, Graham Branch, Gifton Noel-Williams.

We've met once before in this competition and it was in the same round six years ago, just after we'd won promotion from the old Second Division, and played exactly six years ago today when Hartlepool fielded former Burnley striker Kevin Henderson.

We'd got the season off to a good start but looked as though we could come unstuck after going behind eight minutes before half time with a goal from Tommy Miller, now with Sunderland.

Burnley changed things round at half time, Andy Cooke and Phil Gray were replaced by Andy Payton and Graham Branch, and it was Payts who turned the game round. He equalised from the spot, scored again to put is in front, and after Steve Davis had made it 3-1 he completed his hat trick to give us a 4-1 win. That's another record for Payts, the only Claret to come on as a substitute and score a hat trick.

We lost the second leg 3-2, Payts scored again, but went through 6-4 on aggregate and a meeting with Crystal Palace.

The teams in the first leg were;

Burnley: Paul Crichton, Paul Weller, Mitchell Thomas, Ian Cox, Steve Davis, Lee Briscoe, Glen Little, Kevin Ball, Paul Cook, Andy Cooke (Andy Payton 45), Phil Gray (Graham Branch 45). Subs not used: Gordon Armstrong, Matt Heywood, John Mullin.

Hartlepool: Martin Hollund, Darren Knowles, Barry Ferguson, Chris Westwood, James Sharp, Mark Robinson (Sam Shilton 77), Tommy Miller, Paul Stephenson, Lee Fitzpatrick (Thomas Tennebo 77), Kevin Henderson (Craig Midgley 76), Tony Lormor. Subs not used: Tony Williams, Andy McAvoy.Lafferty.

Previous 20 Seasons
Season	Div	Ven	Result	Att	Scorers
1986/87	4	h	1-1	2,465	Entwistle
.	.	a	2-2	1,506	Malley Grewcock
1987/88	4	h	1-0	5,216	Comstive
.	.	a	1-2	2,893	Oghani
1988/89	4	h	0-0	6,289	.
.	.	a	2-2	2,038	Farrell James(pen)
1989/90	4	h	0-0	7,450	.
.	.	a	0-3	3,187	.
1990/91	4	h	4-0	8,514	SP Davis Francis(2) Deary
.	.	a	0-0	4,967	.
1992/93	2	a	0-0	3,021	.
.	.	h	3-0	8,226	Heath(2) SM Davis
1993/94	2	h	2-0	9,532	Eyres Heath
.	.	a	1-4	2,879	Eyres
2000/01	LC	h	4-1	3,319	Payton(3 1pen) SM Davis
.	.	a	2-3	1,090	Cooke Payton

Click HERE to see all our previous results against Hartlepool starting on a very special day in January 1952.