FC Halifax Town: Shaymen boss Wild hoping four new signings will be announced later this week

The Shaymen have already added four new faces to their squad this summer in Harvey Gilmour, Billy Waters, Matt Warburton and Jordan Slew.

Wild says the new additions are all trialists who are currently at the club.

“We’re hopeful of four new faces being announced this week and then I’m hopeful of one more before the season,” said the Town manager.

“In light of Covid we’ve decided to take another couple of bodies just in case we get about across the squad and we have to deal with that, so we’ve decided to take a couple of more bodies than we would have.

“So we’ve given a couple more players a chance and hopefully four will be announced this week.”

Wild added: “We decided to change our mindset and change our focus.

“The market’s completely distorted, what people want for players is ridiculous, so we’ve changed our focus to ‘let’s find players that have got the attributes and let’s make them into a Halifax player’ and that’s what we’ve been doing over the last few weeks.

“We’ve just been patient with things, they’ve fitted into our group well and been what we’ve been looking for.

“Are they the finished article? No. Do we back ourselves to make them better? Yes.

“That’s where we are. We’ve had to be patient in the market and hopefully across the season we can add a couple more.

“This group’s worked hard, they’ve just had a 60-minute training game this morning and it was a really good quality game, I’m really happy with how it went.”

The Shaymen will take on a Sheffield United XI in a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly on Friday.

“Sheffield United was always booked in, but we’ve had problems with the pitch at The Shay,” Wild said.

“We wanted to play at The Shay but we couldn’t, so fair play to Sheffield United, and thank you to them, for hosting us on Friday.

“So it was always going to happen, and it was always going to be Sheffield United, we just needed to sort out times and venues, so I’m really pleased.

“We know that Sheffield United have got some top quality players and they’ll make it tough for us.”

Town’s game at Fylde on Saturday had to be called-off after a member of Wild’s squad tested positive for coronavirus.

“There’s one lad off with Covid, and he’s in a car school with a couple of other boys, so they’re self-isolating,” Wild said.

“So it’s not great but they’ll hopefully be back in on Monday and be ready for the first week of the season.”

When asked if it had been disruptive to the pre-season schedule, Wild said: “Not particularly, we’ve still got a big group of lads in who all PCR tested at the weekend.

“Apart from that one lad, they’re all fine.”

The squad is due to have another round of tests before their game against Sheffield United.

“All the players have a box of lateral flow tests each and if they have any indication of being unwell they’re entrusted to take on,” Wild said.

“But there’s no stipulation that we must test at the moment.

“We’ll ask them to go for another round of testing tomorrow (Wednesday) and then hopefully we’ll all be fine.”

Wild is happy with how pre-season is going, and says their two upcoming friendlies, the second of which is still to be announced, will help get the players up to speed.

“We’ve had two tough days this week, we had a really tough day at the college yesterday (Monday) and we played 60 minutes today to replicate the minutes they’d have got at Fylde on Saturday,” Wild said.

“We’re now back to where we need to be in terms of minutes, and then over these next two friendlies, we are looking to get 90 minutes out of everybody.

“Some will play 90 minutes on Friday and miss Tuesday, and vice versa, so by the end of Tuesday everybody will have played 90 minutes and they’ll be exactly where they need to be.”

When asked if his squad is on track to be ready for the season-opener against Maidenhead on August 21, Wild said: “Definitely, it’s been a good pre-season, I’ve really enjoyed it.

“We’ve got 10 days to go and we’re going to keep moving forward and making sure we’re physically fit and technically ready.”