Striker Troubles At Victoria Park

Hartlepool’s fourth home defeat of the season brought with it an unwanted record. It was the first time in the clubs history that we’d had 5 consecutive home defeats.

Sure, people can say that Norwich will be table toppers but based on that showing they were there for the taking. We gifted them the game on a plate but worryingly we never looked like scoring.

Last year we had the second best home scoring record in the league, better than Leicester, Peterborough and MK Dons with only Leeds scoring more goals at home.

This season we’ve mustered 2 home goals in 4 games despite signing 3 new strikers over the summer.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that Turner got it wrong tactically at the weekend. Boyd had scored and put in a decent performance on Tuesday yet he was dropped in favour of Colin Larkin.

James Brown would obviously be first choice striker if he was fully fit but we face a big problem when he isn’t, as seen on Saturday.

Behan was very poor, I liked the look of him in the first couple of games but he was dreadful at the weekend. He’s not the fastest to begin with yet looked sluggish against Norwich.

He gave the ball away too easily and didn’t win enough headers which is exactly what was needed when we decided to play the long ball game.

Larkin ran about a lot but again failed to have much impact on the game. I think Turner is unsure of his first choice strike force.

We keep hearing that Boyd has been injured and he needs time to impress but he can’t do that with 20 minute cameo appearances at the end of games that are basically lost already.

I don’t particularly but the whole ‘the team needs to gel’ mentality. Including the first team friendlies most of them have played 13 games together already and yet we looked like we had gone backwards on Saturday.

Calls for Turner’s head are premature but he needs to get his side to shape up quickly or it could be a long, hard season ahead.

PooliePoolie

The latest on site poll asks for your opinion on who do you think should be first choice strike force, plus you can give your thoughts over in the Vital Hartlepool forums.