‘Something needed to change’ – Dave Challinor discusses significant changes to Hartlepool United's starting line-up for win over King's Lynn Town

A brace from new striker Luke Armstrong proved to be the difference between the side’s at Victoria Park – he was one of six changes made from Saturday’s 2-1 defeat against Boreham Wood.

Timi Odusina returned from suspension in place of Tyler Magloire, who dropped out of the squad entirely along with Tom Crawford and Henrich Ravas.

Mark Shelton and Ben Killip came back into the fold for their first starts since the 5-0 defeat to Torquay United on Halloween.

Joe Grey was also handed his first league start for the club, becoming the youngest player to start a match in the National League so far this season at age 17 years, 219 days.

Rhys Oates returned to the starting line-up with Ryan Donaldson dropping to the bench. It was the first time the Pools skipper had failed to start a league game under Dave Challinor.

And after a run of one win in eight league matches going into the game, the changes were as expected as they were necessary.

“Sometimes it’s hard because you don’t want to be knee-jerk and you don’t want players out there playing with a fear that if they don’t perform or we don’t get a result then that’s it and it’s wholesale changes, you can’t work like that,” Challinor said after the win.

“But we just felt something needed to change a little bit and sometimes you can be a little bit over critical.

"We lost two games on the bounce but if we’re being honest the game at Solihull was taken away from us due to a situation out of our control.

"We just needed to freshen things up and the players who were left out weren’t left out because they didn’t perform on Saturday, we just thought we needed to give things a bit of a tweak and I suppose reinforce to the players on the brink of the squad that the opportunities are there and if they continue to do the right things day to day then they can force our hand.

"Did I expect the lads who came in to do well? Absolutely. Luke getting two goals on his debut is just what we’ve needed.

"We’ll put quality in from both sides so if you put yourself between the sticks, you’ll get chances.”

Being limited to just five substitutes on the bench also saw some notable omissions from the matchday squad.

“You look at changes, Tyler and Crawfs go from starting the game on Saturday to being left out entirely,” Challinor added.

“It’s not based really on performance, we just looked at the changes we made.

"In terms of substitutes, Luke [Armstrong] hasn’t played a lot of football, Rhys hasn’t and we felt Joe may struggle to complete 90-minutes given how hard he works so we wanted to base our bench on that in order to give us options.

"There’s other players who’ve missed out which is a good sign of where we’re at in a way. We’ve got Josh [MacDonald], Luke Williams and Parky [David Parkhouse] who haven’t been involved but we need everyone fit and available and doing everything they can to get in the team.”

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