Chesterfield 1-2 FC Halifax Town: Wild praises "excellent" Shaymen after impressive victory

First-half goals from Jeff King and Jake Hyde were enough to seal an impressive win for Town, with Kairo Mitchell scoring for the hosts after the interval."I thought first-half we were excellent, we decided to let them have the first pass.

"I've watched teams go up against them, they want to play through you centrally and I didn't want that so we just let them have the first pass and then we tried to pick them off from there, and it worked a treat first-half," said Wild.

"We thought our game plan worked, we picked them off, scored two and we could have had another one.

"So we were really pleased with that.

"We knew they'd come after us second-half ans they'd try and load us up, hit the big diagonal into the number two, and we made it nervy, a little mistake, but such is life.

"I always felt if they were going to play longer passes into the box they weren't going to hurt us, they were going to hurt us if they tried to be a little bit intricate and we cut off those areas so they couldn't do that.

"We've rode the storm second-half but that's the game plan and we were pleased with how it worked."

Wild felt his side's first-half performance was up there among some of the best from his team this season.

"It is but in a different way because when you look at when we went to Notts County away, we tried to press them and stop them playing, whereas tonight was more about sitting in, being compact," he said.

"I watched Bromley play against them on Saturday and they were compact, they couldn't play through them, they had to try and play round them.

"I'm really pleased with how the game plan went tonight."

Wild praised his captain Nathan Clarke, who gave a man-of-the-match display on his return to the team after being left out of Saturday's win over King's Lynn.

"I think special mention must go to the captain, I thought he was outstanding tonight, I'm really pleased," said Wild.

"I pick teams for games, I don't just pick a team and stick with it, and the team we picked tonight stood up.

"Even the subs when they came on, a horrible game to come into to try and get up to match tempo, but they tried their best to do that."

Wild added: "It's not as though I dropped him, I switched it round because of how I thought the opposition were going to play.

"So it was far from him being dropped, but he's come back in tonight and maybe the rest did him good."

The Town boss said his side produced a hard working performance.

"If you're sat there as a supporter tonight, you're looking at it and you say 'well what do I pay my money for?'

"For a team to graft, you get that out of them, for a team that scores goals, we score goals and create so many chances, and for a team that will work hard out of possession, and I thought you got that tonight as well," he said.

On Hyde, who scored his fifth goal in nine games, Wild said: "We brought him here to score goals, but his all-round game, keeping it up there, getting hold of the ball, stopping the ball coming back, I think that's as important as his goals because it allows everybody to get up the pitch.

"I thought he did that tirelessly tonight."

It was announced before the game that midfielder Jack Earing will be out for the next seven to ten days with a hamstring injury.

"It's a tweak of the hamstring," Wild said. "We're confident he's alright, but the physio wants to treat is as though it's a grade one hamstring just in case because the last thing we want is to lose him for the run-in."

And on defender Tom Bradbury, who was left out of the side, Wild said: "Tactical, I just felt we needed to change it round and this is the first time I've been able to do that, rotate the lads round when I feel it tactically needs to be done."