Why Pete Wild believes his Hartlepool United side are moving in the right direction
Pete Wild believes his Hartlepool United side are moving in the right direction.
Pete Wild believes his Hartlepool United side are moving in the right direction as they gear up for the return of National League fixtures.
Struggling Pools host Wealdstone at The Vic on Saturday afternoon fresh from the best part of a fortnight off matches after they were dumped out of the FA Cup by Marine in the fourth qualifying round. Pools sit fourth bottom in the National League drop zone with Wealdstone just above them in 18th, three points ahead on 18.
Reflecting on the past fortnight, Wild told BBC Tees Sport at his pre-match press conference: “It's been an opportunity to try and increase the load across training, try and get some of what I'd call habits-based practices across, so what are the habits that we want our players to do. So we've done lots of that, we had an 11v11 last Saturday morning. So it's been a real good two weeks to try and really establish and sort of really fathom out or sort of find out what we want them to do.
“I think you learn every day, I've been able to sort of sit every player down and sort of get to know them far better and them to really understand what I want from them and where they stand in the group. So that's been another useful exercise as well. But yeah, we feel in a good place. Actions speak louder than words, the acid test will be Saturday to see if we're progressing in the right direction. But I can only tell you what I see on the eye and what I see on the eye is a group of lads taking on board what we're asking them to do and trying ever so hard to improve on that.”
Last time out in the league Pools were on the end of a dramatic 4-3 defeat at runaway leaders Boreham Wood. Wild added: “We all felt coming away from that that we were moving in the right direction and that there was some real positive signs coming from that and again, across the month we scored 10 goals, that was more than we scored in the whole season. So we're scoring goals now, we're creating chances, we're looking tougher to play against. So there's a lot to be positive about.”
Pools have no fresh injury concerns ahead of Saturday’s visit of Wealdstone, with Luke Charman and Max Kouogun okay after being subbed in recent games.