Captain Ryan Donaldson confident of making new role in Hartlepool United side a success

Just eight appearances into his 2019-20 campaign, Donaldson has already equalled his best ever seasonal tally for Pools following his deflected strike against Dagenham & Redbridge on Saturday.

The 28-year-old has played in a number of positions for the club so far this season having been utilised as a wing-back, attacking-midfielder and left-winger in addition to his current forward role.

“I’m enjoying playing up front trying to stay close to Gime [Toure],” said the versatile skipper.

“Nicke [Kabamba]’s been out, Niko [Muir]’s been out, Jamo [Luke James] has had a little knock so it was needs must I think.

“I believe I’m good enough to stay in the team wherever I’m playing, not to be arrogant but I feel like I can play well and make a difference anywhere.

“It’s nice to play and I love playing for this club and we’ve got a very good squad and Dagenham was just a bad day that we need to learn from and move on.”

Donaldson’s strike gave United some late hope at Victoria Road over the weekend but it couldn’t change the result as The Daggers claimed a 3-1 win.

“I’m not really bothered about scoring if it doesn’t help us get something from the game, the Barrow goal was much better because we won,” he admitted.

“It might have been an own goal to be honest, I had no idea where it was going.

“But after the goal I thought we could have got something from the game because we’d started turning things a bit with Nicke and Josh [Hawkes] coming on and being positive.

“When we made it 2-1 I thought it would put them under pressure but their third is a bad goal so soon after we scored which killed the game.

“But overall, I don’t think we deserved anything from the game. When things aren’t going your way you’ve got to try and stay in the game and make things difficult – we gifted them three goals and got what we deserved.”