John Halls and Darren Powell

John Halls played 45 minutes against Wrexham on Saturday and Darren Powell was due to play but a calf injury in the warm up forced him out of the starting line up. We know that Larry is looking to get another defender in with Kaspars Gorkss looking very likely to move on to QPR. The question is will he get a right-back in e.g. John Halls and move Shaun Barker to centre back or go for a straight swap for Gorkss e.g. Darren Powell.

John Halls

Halls began his football career at Arsenal’s youth set-up, he was part of the 2000 FA Youth Cup-winning team. With pretty much no chance of breaking ahead of established first team players at Highbury he had three loan spells, Colchester, K.S.K. Beveren (Belgium) and Stoke City. Following the loan spell at the Britannia he signed permanently for Stoke in December 2003. After 61 appearances and two goals for Stoke he signed for Reading in January 2006 for £250,000. He was part of the promotion winning side to the Premiership but was unable to hold down a first team place in the top flight.

Three loan spells followed last season at Preston North End, Crystal Palace and Sheffield United, he didn`t face the Seasiders in either of the loan spells. He`s also been linked with move to Southamton.

Darren Powell

A name that Pool fans should recognize with over 228 league starts. Powell started his career off at Hampton & Richmond a Conference South team. He moved onto Brentford in 1998 and stayed for four years making 128 appearances scoring 6 goals. A 400k move followed in 2002 to Crystal Palace, Powell played 55 games for the Eagles scoring two goals. One of those goals came in the play-offs semi final against Sunderland, Palace went onto beat West Ham in the final to win promotion to the top flight.

Similar to Halls, Powell was unable to hold down a first team place in the Premiership and was loaned to then Championship West Ham. In 2005 he signed for Southampton and went onto make 43 appearances before being released at the end of last season.



So both players were unable to make it at the top level but Championship football seems to suit them. Out of the two I would be happier to see John Halls sign with there being a some negative views on Darren Powell`s time at Southampton.