Lee Clark enthused by Hartlepool United's reaction to Grimsby Town friendly defeat

Lee Clark has urged his Hartlepool United players to remain positive after they lost their perfect pre-season record with a friendly defeat against League Two side Grimsby Town.

The Pools head coach handed starts to on-loan Chelsea goalkeeper Max Merrick and the returning Cam John after they agreed to become the latest additions to Clark’s squad in the 24 hours before their first home friendly of what has been an overwhelmingly positive summer. There were positive moments throughout the game and plenty for Poolies to enthuse over from their new look side - but two goals from Justin Amaluzor and one from former Bradford City striker Andy Cook ensured the Mariners claimed a 3-0 win at Victoria Park.

Speaking after the loss, Clark revealed he was heartened by his players’ reaction in the home dressing room and insisted he and his coaching staff will ‘find solutions’ to the issues they faced against David Artell’s men.

He told the club website: “I just said to the players, and I love their reaction, they’re disappointed in there, but I said I love that but don’t be too hard on yourself, don’t be too down. I heard the reaction of the fans, they liked what they’ve seen, a lot of it. Obviously, we don’t like to lose, I love that mentality so we take it from there. We will work on what we felt we didn’t do particularly well today, we will look at those instances, and we will go again next Saturday and try and be even better again. We purposely picked these fixtures knowing the step-up would give us challenges and scenarios that might make us try and find solutions and we will know find those solutions on the training pitch on Monday.”

Benefit

There were two injury concerns for the Pools boss as he was forced to replace Jack Nolan at half-time before Luke Charman suffered an injury during the closing stages after he had been brought on to replace Neo Eccleston with 20 minutes remaining. Clark confirmed Nolan had suffered ‘a bit of tightness’ during the first-half and seemed to hint there were concerns Charman has suffered a more serious injury prior to his late substitution.

He said: “There were one or two where you have to make changes. Jack Nolan, that was just a bit of tightness. Unfortunately, for Luke Charman, he might have opened up his knee, but I don’t want to say too much and that’s a shame because Jack has started the game so well and Charms had come on and was really bright as well. Cam has only just joined us, that was his first minutes so he was down for 45 minutes and we have to get him up to speed with the new Hartlepool United way. He will benefit from that and we will work hard with him over the coming weeks to make sure he is right at it ready for the Barrow game.”

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