Joe Ramage: Hartlepool United read the room with Josh Umerah but was it quantity over quality in January?

It doesn’t matter if you are a supporter, a player or indeed just one of us trying to make sense of the entire swollen, self-indulgent football propaganda machine that is the January window, it is a month which brings out the best, and worst, of us all.

For supporters, the very success, or failure in Hartlepool United’s case, of their club may rely on what happens across those 31 days - where results become almost secondary to ‘Is anyone signing?’ in the comments.

For players, their very livelihoods can often be at stake as clubs reshuffle their packs to accommodate what has gone right, or wrong, since the summer with regards to their league position at the halfway stage.

And for us? The joys and despairs of being entrenched somewhere in the middle of the previous two on this bi-annual merry-go-round of football transfers.

Mercifully, however, the transfer stuff is now done until the summer, but not before football’s very own rival to the Christmas holidays with transfer deadline day.

Keith Curle and his recruitment staff were hard at work throughout the day at the club’s training base to strengthen his squad with five new signings.

Not only that, however, they needed to be able to read the room, something which they certainly did when it comes to Josh Umerah.

A deadline day-eve bid from Burton Albion for the 13-goal striker set panic levels soaring amongst supporters who may have feared the worst. They wouldn’t, would they?

The answer was no. Hartlepool did exactly what they had to do in their situation and maintained a firm stance over their most prized asset, irrespective of whatever fee was offered.

Umerah is one of the key reasons the club have a chance of survival still at this stage of the season, and he will likely now play a big role over the second half of the season to determine whether the club can push on and achieve their aim of League Two survival.

And he will be aided by 11 new arrivals in total from the January window with Curle now having more than reshaped his squad following his appointment in September.

January’s 11 recruits add to 16 summer signings, 17 should you include Chris Maguire, two free agent transfers prior to the window and a short-term loan for Alex Cairns, which represents an extraordinary 31 new players brought into the club over the course of the last six months.

But how successful this particular window has been for Hartlepool will be determined by what happens over the next three months and whether Hartlepool will be above the dotted line by the time the full-time whistle blows at Edgeley Park on Monday, May 8.

It’s no secret Hartlepool missed out on several targets throughout the duration of the month before their deadline day rush.

How much of that was then organised or how much of that was somewhat scattergun is open for debate, but the quantity is now very much there for Curle. The question remains; is the quality? Hartlepool have 18 cup finals left in order to find out and preserve their Football League status.