Welcome back to Victoria Park for today's FA Cup 4th Round match against West Ham United and we offer a very warm welcome to all their Directors, management, players and fans that have made the long journey up to Hartlepool today. We also welcome the ITV cameras and we thank them for choosing to come to Hartlepool.
Last Friday night's excellent win over Northampton Town was our first League victory in four and only our second win in the last eleven League matches so the result was needed and has taken us back up to 12th place in the table.
It was a good performance by everyone in the team as we controlled the game after Joel put us ahead inside five minutes. He added another early in the second half to seal the win and the visitors really only had one chance late in the game to salvage anything. It was also a good game to be able to bring on young on-loan striker Liam Henderson, who looked a very useful player and might even have opened his Hartlepool account with a couple of late efforts.
To follow on from my programme notes from last Friday, it has been an interesting time in the transfer market with a couple of "big name" players moving clubs. Manchester City failed to land their number one target, Brazilian superstar Kaka, but look to have brought in midfielder Nigel de Jong from Hamburg and have definitely signed striker Craig Bellamy from West Ham (which was a big boost for us before today's game!). Previously, the only big money signings during this Window had been two players leaving Portsmouth, Lassana Diarra going to Real Madrid for a reported £20m and Jermain Defoe moving back to Tottenham Hotspur.
Other moves over the last two weeks included former Wigan midfielder Kevin Kilbane moving to Hull City, James Beattie switching from Sheffield United to Stoke City and Sunderland's Liam Miller going to QPR.
However, it confirms the point I made in my last notes that none of the "big four" clubs have spent the sort of money we would have expected in previous seasons, although Arsenal are reported to be very close to bringing in (and may have done so by now) Andrei Arshavin from Zenit St Petersburg, providing Manchester City don't gazump Arsene Wenger!
As previously mentioned, we are still actively looking to bring in players, most likely loan deals to cover for players that are currently injured. We have already brought in Liam Henderson on loan from Watford, a local lad who was in our Centre of Excellence as a youngster before Watford, then in the Premier League, spotted his potential and paid us compensation to take him down south. We have contacted several other clubs about players that we would be interested in bringing in on loan but so far those clubs have been unwilling to allow them out. Hopefully that may change as we get nearer to the transfer deadline at the end of the month. We'll keep trying to bolster the squad but only with the type of player that we all feel will improve its overall quality and work with our existing players.
Today's game is one that the Club has been eagerly awaiting as we hope to repeat the level of performance we showed against Stoke City in the previous round. If we can do that then we feel that we have a good chance against a team that we know will allow us to play football. West Ham, under the guidance of Gianfranco Zola, are a "footballing" side and so it's up to us to get as close as we can to them and try to stop them passing the ball through us. It will be a hard task but not impossible. However, we need to be at our best with a hopefully full Victoria Park right behind us.
Enjoy today's game and, as we always say, get behind the lads from the first minutes and let's see if we can cause another FA Cup shock. The 5th Round in our Centenary Year would be something really special. We have a big audience today, not only in this country but around the world via television. Let's put on a good show and be well behaved on the terraces.
