FC Halifax Town: Wild confident his side can put things right against Ebbsfleet

The Shaymen are aiming to bounce back from a disappointing 2-0 home defeat to Woking last Saturday, while relegation-threatened Ebbsfleet recorded a vital 1-0 win at play-off chasers Hartlepool.

“What a great result they’ve had on Saturday,” said Wild. “I think you can expect more of what Sutton brought and Woking brought, they’ll be tough to break down, they’ll be hard to beat, they’ll sit in and wait for a mistake or a set-piece and try to hurt us that way.

“Like I said in the programme last week, a lot of teams are going to come to The Shay knowing what our threat is, so they’re going to sit in and make it tough for us.

“We were lucky enough against Sutton, where I thought we played some of our best football in months in the first-half, and we got the victory, and well deserved.

“But if we’re half-a-yard off, we’ve no chance. We’ve got to be at our best to compete, but we weren’t at our best and Woking took the only two chances in the game.

“So we know we’ve got to be better than that, we know we were miles off it on Saturday, but we’re confident.

“We’ve trained really well, we’ve tried to address one or two things and we’re confident we can put that right on Saturday.”

Elaborating on what areas have been addressed in training, the Town boss said: “We had a game-plan going into Saturday to play into forwards’ feet and look to hurt them that way, and as you saw in the game, we went far too long far too quickly.

“So we’ve been looking at getting the ball into forwards’ feet better.

“Last Tuesday we used our wing-backs high and we exploited them through the wing-backs, but we didn’t do that good enough on Saturday, so we’ve been working with our wing-backs.

“Out of possession we’ve been working on closing down, being tougher to play against.

“Their manager said to me after the game ‘we told our lads you’re the hardest working team in the league and we had to match you’.

“Well they did match us unfortunately, more than matched us.”

Town’s only goal in their last four games has come from the penalty spot.

“We spoke about that this week,” said Wild. “If you think about those four games, Sutton, alright we scored one, but we’ve had a nailed on goal chalked off and another penalty chalked off.

“Torquay - more than enough chances to win the game, we’ve had two kicked off the line in the 90th minute.

“And then you’ve got Halesowen and Woking, yeah, we haven’t looked like scoring in those two games, so with two out of the four that stat has got some credence, and the other two, it probably hasn’t.”

Wild added: “We’ve got to be at our best to win every week. We don’t have that luxury where we can be half-a-yard off and still win.

“People have got to be patient with us. We’ve done massively well to get where we are, but I think they had every right to moan on Saturday, it wasn’t good enough.

“If I’d have been sat in the stands, I’d have been moaning with them. That wasn’t good enough and I’m fully aware of that.

“As good as we were last Tuesday, we were as bad on Saturday. That disappoints me, that hurts me.

“I’ve told the players that, I’ve had some honest words with the players after the game.

“We’re all committed to putting it right but actions speak louder than words and if our actions show that on Saturday then hopefully we’ll get back to winning ways.”

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