Verdict: What next for Hartlepool United in 2024 after year of decline?

Pools find themselves sleepwalking towards the wrong end of the league table and are in serious danger of drifting into a sea of nothingness after what has been a culmination of errors throughout the club over the last 18 months.

They enter 2024 seeking their sixth permanent boss in just over two years, just four points from the National League relegation zone and with an owner wanting out.

Speaking of managers, the trail of Hartlepool’s demise will always likely lead you back to Dave Challinor’s exit in November 2021.

But as much as there are varying points across Hartlepool’s timeline which got us here, we are here.

Heading briefly back to this summer, there were still 10 days to go until Hartlepool kicked off their National League campaign at Barnet.

While the rain bounced off the away dugout in the mid-summer evening at Redcar Athletic’s Green Lane, with anger and discontent still at the forefront of Hartlepool supporters’ minds after their devastating relegation from the Football League three months previous, manager John Askey made no qualms about what the focus would be for the season ahead.

“It has to be,” he said, when asked whether promotion would be the target.

It was a feeling reciprocated throughout the camp, with players and staff cautiously optimistic heading into the season despite the outside noise surrounding the club owing to a stand-off in relations between supporters and owner Raj Singh.

Hartlepool’s summer transfer business was productive yet with no guarantee of success.

Askey had to negotiate his way through as many as 17 players leaving the club following relegation, some through their own choice and some he was only too happy to see the back of.

It brought a much better harmony into a dressing room that has been fractured, almost beyond repair, at times over previous 18 months.

That mood was also aided significantly by a much-improved pre-season regimen which included a training camp in Scotland as opposed to the all-singing, all-dancing but sub-standard trip to Portugal last summer.

More than 500 supporters made the trip to Barnet that day, buoyed by the kind of hope which can only be borne out of a new season, even if the despair of the previous one was still lingering.

They were quickly handed that sinking feeling once more.

Askey was almost verbatim of what we heard towards the end of last season: Holding players accountable defensively after a 3-2 defeat which flattered them.

And yet the approach seemed to work as it sparked what transcended into Hartlepool’s best start to a campaign in over 30 years as five wins came in the next National League six games.

Maybe, just maybe, this ship could turn around after all.

But much like the Tall Ships of the summer, that idea sailed away as the autumn brought about a torrid run of form which has since overlapped into the early winter.

Ghost story or relegation battle? Either way, Hartlepool may now be in one.

Of course, as with everything, there is mitigation and objectivity.

Yet for as much as we're all tired of seeing, hearing, reading and typing about Hartlepool’s remarkable injury list this season, you cannot help but acknowledge its influence.

For a team to achieve success, you tend to find you need a favourable run as far as the fitness of your key players is concerned and that is something Askey simply did not have.

But it goes beyond that. The injuries led to him having to scramble, scratch and claw for almost any signature to help fill a space in the squad with the likes of Osazee Aghatise, Tyrell Agyemang, Zak Johnson, Mitch Hancox, Joe Mattock and Ciaran Brennan all drafted in at various points this season on short-term deals.

And while this collection of players have provided something to the squad, they all fall into somewhat unwanted categories of being either inexperienced, out of form, out of favour or out of a contract.

Unfortunately, this is the way it is for Hartlepool in 2023-24.

With that there has been an inevitable inconsistency in both results and selection which has then led to an extreme drop in confidence and self-belief.

They concede goals early, they concede goals late – the two goals conceded in less than a minute at Aldershot a particular chastening experience.

But for all there have been struggles and misfortunes on the field, Hartlepool’s challenging return to the National League has been played out amid a backdrop of the club being up for sale and everything that entails.

It’s no secret that chairman Singh now wants out of the club.

But for all Askey continued to offer empathy to Singh, and for all Singh has declared he will continue to fund the club in the short-term until he can hand over the reins, there simply must be a point where it becomes a factor.

Having helped save the club and restore it back to the Football League, errors over the last 18 months that have seen the club tumble back down into non-league obscurity ultimately fall on the owner.

Are there others to blame? Sure. Players must take responsibility for the kind of abject performances seen in the opening 30 minutes at Wealdstone, where Pools found themselves 3-0 down before recovering to draw 4-4.

Managers, past and present, must take responsibility for selections, signings, tactics and their ability to bring and maintain harmony to a dressing room.

In Askey’s case, there can be no denying he worked under certain constraints.

But is this Hartlepool squad worse, say, than the Macclesfield squad he worked wonders with in 2017? You would argue not.

Will, however, the team be better off without him following his December 30 departure?

Will Singh risk appointing a permanent replacement when there is takeover talk in the air?

The Hartlepool United Supporters Trust’s recent revelation that it has brought together a consortium to buy him out offers a flicker of hope that 2024 can finally see a change in momentum at a football club which has grown stale – something which is desperately needed before they find themselves in real danger of being sucked into the vacuum of non-league also rans.

But, as we head into 2024, there still remains a level of uncertainty at all levels of the club.

As with any team, in any division, in any country, however, football’s greatest currency comes in the form of winning.

If Hartlepool can somehow manufacture a series of results to start turning the tide – and January’s games are generally more inviting on paper than recent fixtures – then the background noise will be just that.

A handful of potentially key players are also due back shortly, including some who will have points to prove of their own as they head out of contract in the summer.

We saw how effective a Hartlepool team can be under Askey in the opening weeks of the season and in parts towards the end of last season.

There’s no reason it cannot be again when his replacement – temporary or permanent - has a full deck to choose from.

But somehow Hartlepool United need to stop being a football club seemingly powerless to decline and start getting things right at all levels.