RUSS GREEN is the Hartlepool United chief executive who instigated the club’s takeover.

The outlook on Pools’ desperate season has been transformed in a matter of days. From an all-too-familiar League Two thumping at Burton last week, to IOR selling their controlling interest to TMH and the charismatic Ronnie Moore taking over as boss, it’s been a tumultuous week at Victoria Park.

The pressure was on former chairman Ken Hodcroft as Pools floundered. A lack of investment in the club and playing squad brought accusations of a lack of interest from the owners.

The malaise of this season has been building in recent months. Pools just survived in the Football League this season and, when they needed an upturn in fortunes on and off the pitch, both aspects went into decline.

Green, looking at it from the inside and after being well-aware of the ill-feeling around the town knew the feeling outside, accepted something had to change.

“IOR have been here 17 years and they’ve invested heavily in the club for those 17 years,’’ he reflected. “But the oil industry is not what it was, and, it sounds silly, but we’re affected by that. Oil prices have dropped big-style.

“IOR have been brilliant and saved the club, but after 17 years we’ve come to a crossroads. That’s a long time to be at the club. We knew this new investment would give us impetus at a vital stage of the season.

“These men were available and we got it done fairly quickly. The transition has been very quick, very professional and I phoned the [outgoing] chairman last night to thank him for that. The new owners have been very impressed. Everything has been transparent.

“The new men have loads of companies in loads of industries. TMH they call it, set up just to look after Hartlepool United. The remit is to stay in the league.

And he added: “I knew [TMH] through a mutual friend at the Football League who’d had dealings with them. I knew they’d try to get another club.

“It’s been pretty quick, but speed was paramount. The objective was to get someone in for January to kick on.’’

For many, things couldn’t have seemed any worse with Pools’ FA Cup defeat to Blyth two weeks ago.

Hodcroft’s crass decision to charge £20 a ticket to watch a non league team at Victoria Park in a game which was televised turned people off before the woeful performance and outcome.

It also led to the exit of manager Paul Murray, sacked after his seventh game in charge and saw plenty of people within football rounding on the club.

But Green said: “Blyth wasn’t a tipping point, not really. We knew we need extra investment and we’d been looking for two years. The big sticking point with the chairman was that we don’t own the ground.

“The council do and we know they don’t want to build on it, but we can’t do what we want. We think we could make this a seven-day-a-week operation, we could build a new away stand and a hotel behind it – these are the kinds of things we’re thinking about.

“The new owners will go to see the council but the priority is to stay up."

Pools sit bottom of the table ahead tomorrow’s first game under Moore and TMH at home to Oxford. Three wins all season and a goal difference of minus 24.

They survived last campaign, but that was only with three games to go thanks to a dramatic home win over Morecambe.

The club’s Never Say Die spirit will need to come to the fore.

“Had we gone down last season we did have a plan, but it still wouldn’t have looked good,’’ added Green, named the League Two chief executive of the year last month. “Unfortunately it didn’t work out for Colin Cooper. The season’s been pretty dire so far, but we’ve still got belief.

“But we know it’s a big, big drop if we go down – bigger than from the Premier League pro rata.

“There is a parachute payment but it’s not as good as the Premier League’s. It’s a bit more complicated than that.

“I think relegation would cost this club about £750,000 – our turnover is £3m.

“There’s a lot of emotion around. We wanted to get this done now so that we’re ready to go in the window on January 1st, not January 15th. We have players in the pipeline, experienced League One and League Two players to get us out of this mess.’’