FC Halifax Town: Wild hoping key man will return for visit of Wealdstone

Summerfield was an unused substitute during last Saturday’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat at South Shields due to a groin injury, but was due to resume training on Thursday, according to the Town manager.

“He hasn’t trained since after the Woking game. We decided we’d wait until we got to the pitch on Saturday and as soon as I saw the pitch I said to Luke ‘you won’t be going on that’ because he’d have been out for four to six weeks if he’d gone on that,” Wild said.

“We’re still working to try and get Jake Hyde back to full fitness.

“Matt Stenson was out striking a ball and sprinting this week, which has been pleasing. We’re hoping he’s going to join in full training on Friday.

“We’ve had some knocks and bumps from this weekend just gone but we should be in and around full numbers, probably not for Saturday, but come our next game, we hopefully will be.”

When asked if Hyde would be fit enough to start on Saturday, Wild said: “We’ll make a decision later in the week on that. He certainly wasn’t ready to start last Saturday, and I think you saw that when he went on.

“We’ve got to make sure we do things right, we’ve invested a lot of time and effort into the lads we’ve brought in and the last thing I need now is them to be out again because we’ve thrown them back in too early.

“So I need to make sure that’s managed right and we get the longevity of the season out of them, and not just a short-term fix.”

Wild said Stenson won’t be involved on Saturday but was progressing very well.

“He is a week ahead of schedule in his recovery, which is a credit to our medical staff,” said Wild, who said he was due to decide on the future of forwards Gold Omotayo and Gevaro Nepomuceno this week.

On midfielder Reuben Noble-Lazarus, who injured his knee in a tackle against Boston in pre-season and is yet to make his competitive debut, Wild said: “He’s progressing well, he’s just trying to get his football fitness back up.

“When we feel that’s back up he comes into contention for the squad, but that’s just taken a little bit longer than we thought.

“He’s been out a long time so it’s important we don’t rush him back and he then picks up a bigger injury.”

Wild wants his side to put last Saturday’s result behind them when they host Wealdstone, who won 3-2 at King’s Lynn Town on Tuesday night in-front of the watching Halifax boss.

“Just get back to how we play, you can call it a reaction if you want, but it’s more getting back to how we want to play and how we behave,” he said.

“We’ve done that in five games but unfortunately we didn’t do that on Saturday.

“It’s not ‘rip it up and start again’, it’s not wholesale changes, it’s just a case of making sure we address the two or three things on the training ground this week that need to be better.

“Our attitude and application needs to be better, we need to be on the front-foot better and we need to work harder with and without the football.

“They’re only slight tweaks that weren’t in evidence on Saturday.

“There were too many lads who had an off-day, and unfortunately when that happens you can’t afford it.

“Hopefully I’ll have a couple of lads back from injury that will boost the squad and give me more options to move things around and change it should I need to.

“Don’t get me wrong, me more than anybody wants to make sure we get back on track on Saturday because it’s so important that we do, otherwise it does then start to linger.

“But having watched the game back, it’s quite clear to see what was wrong and it’s more us being on the front-foot more and we’ll be fine, we’ll be back to where we are.

“We just need to make sure we address that in training and we’re ready for Saturday.”

Town badly missed the calming influence of Summerfield at South Shields last Saturday, but Wild said his squad has enough quality for his absence not to have been felt.

“I don’t want to put it down to one person, obviously Luke’s had a great start to the season and been very influential in the games,” said the Town boss.

“But lads have to step up and I’ve got enough quality that shouldn’t mean we miss one player.

“All in all, we were completely half-a-yard off it on Saturday, which is disappointing because the week leading up to it we looked fitter and stronger than ever in training.

“But it came to the Saturday and we never got going. That’s disappointing but that’s gone now, I can’t change the result, I can’t change what happened, but what I can change is our mentality to make sure we get back to how we’ve been playing at the start of the season.”

Wild also said there have been no developments over the future of defender Jacob Hanson, who remains available for transfer.

Follow all the action from Halifax’s game with Wealdstone on Saturday on our live blog at www.halifaxcourier.co.uk with Town writer Tom Scargill. There will also be an on-the-whistle match report on the Courier website, along with post-match reaction from Town boss Pete Wild.

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