Keith Curle comments on Burton Albion interest in Hartlepool United striker as Pools look for momentum ahead of Sutton United clash

Hartlepool boss Curle was delighted he was able to send the 'absolutely banging' away following home with three points from the weekend win over Doncaster Rovers but the Pools boss knows the importance of being able to back up that result on home soil.

“They were absolutely banging [at Doncaster],” said Curle.

“I said when I first walked into the football club that we need to get this place bouncing.

“Performances and results like that put the belief and the bounce back into Hartlepool United. Our job now is to maintain it and they will stick with us.

“I love the home games,” he added.

“The disappointing thing is I've not seen it at full volume yet, enough. But we need to get a full house, the place bouncing and a victory.

“Where we’ve been this season there’s bound to be negativity. It’s easy to be negative. I’m not a fool so I understand that negativity, but I come up with solutions otherwise if you walk around with a negative attitude without finding a solution, every day is a bad day.”

Curle should be boosted by the return to full fitness of striker Josh Umerah.

A decision was made to start Umerah on the bench at Doncaster after the 25-year-old had missed training through illness.

It was the culmination of an eventful week for the striker after Burton Albion saw their approach to sign the 13-goal forward quickly rebuffed.

“Luckily enough I know the Burton chairman personally. I get on well with Ben so I knew I could have a conversation with Ben and it was made very clear, and very evident, that Josh wasn’t going anywhere this window,” Curle told The Mail.

“There were rumours of other bids, but nobody contacted me directly.”

Curle added on Umerah’s illness: “You can’t decide when somebody is ill and they’re not able to do what you want them to do.

“But it was nice to have options available if we needed to shuffle the pack and change formations.”

Hartlepool could also still be without Callum Cooke and Jack Hamilton as both deal with injuries requiring further scans.

But after the arrival of five new players on deadline day Curle will continue to have options available to him for the visit of Sutton - with goalkeeper Jakub Stolarczyk set for a home debut after earning a clean sheet at Doncaster.

“I’ve said to the players it’s an excellent result but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” said Curle.

“We’ll be on the training ground because there’s still things we can improve on and develop as a team. There’s pleasing elements, but there’s still more to come.

“We’re not the finished article. There’s still a lot of work to do to get that understanding of what we want to be, who we want to be and what we want to look like, which is a team that finds a way to win a game of football.”