Joe Ramage: Hartlepool United's recruitment flaws on show again after recent double loan exit

Kelly was appointed as the club's sporting director to coincide with John Askey’s arrival as new manager with chairman Raj Singh keen to move into a more designated directorship model moving forward following the exit of head of recruitment Chris Trotter.

Trotter’s quiet exit in the background may be seen as something of a finger-pointing exercise given the turnover of players since his appointment in the role a year ago - but quite how many of the 32 players signed during the course of this season were undisputedly down to him would remain open for debate, you suspect.

Nevertheless, two of those players made their exits from the club last week in Leon Clarke and Mikael Ndjoli with the pair combining to make just 14 appearances between them.

Clarke signed as a free agent under Keith Curle after the January transfer window closed but has now been ushered out of the exit door inside just three weeks of Askey’s arrival.

The 38-year-old has swapped League Two for the Southern Central Premier League and Rushall Olympic which, perhaps, shows the flaws and just how out of sync Hartlepool's recruitment has been over the last 10 months.

Ndjoli and Clarke became the 10th and 11th players to have left from the 32 signed, alongside Reghan Tumilty, Brody Paterson, Ellis Taylor, Clarke Oduor, Theo Robinson, Christopher Missilou, Rollins Menayese due to injury, Chris Maguire who was never able to feature and Alex Cairns who was an emergency loan.

Factor in the likes of Kyle Letheren, Jake Hastie, Wes McDonald and January recruit Tayt Trusty who are seemingly out of favour, with Matt Dolan, Oliver Finney and Brendan Kiernan on the fringes of the first team, that leaves a sizeable chunk of players brought in who are not involved.

That, coupled with the behind the scenes turmoil when it comes to staff turnover, is largely why Hartlepool find themselves in the position they are in.

New manager Askey has stressed that kind of turnover simply has to stop if the club wants to be successful and that will fall on Kelly - beginning in the summer.

And yet, despite the seemingly unquenchable thirst to prevent such turnover, you can’t help but feel it will happen again this summer, at least in terms of playing staff, regardless of which division Hartlepool end up in.

With several players heading out of contract in the summer, key players including the likes of Jamie Sterry, Nicky Featherstone and Mohamad Sylla, there is an unease as to whether they will agree to new terms.

Talks are yet to open, and are unlikely to, you feel, until Hartlepool’s future becomes clearer.

It leaves Kelly with a lot to do.

Ultimately, Hartlepool need to move away from a position where players will come and go on such a whim as we have seen this season.

Kelly stressed his job is to try and improve every aspect of the club moving forward. But in order to move forward, the recruitment simply has to fare better than we have seen over the last year.