FC Halifax Town: Wild using the break to look ahead to next season

All professional football has been suspended until at least April 30, with the official stance from the National League still that football will be suspended until April 3, but that could well follow suit in due course.

If so, that would mean Halifax would have been without a game in seven weeks.

The FA is “considering a number of different options” with regards to completion of National League season which is due to finish on April 25. All clubs have been invited to take part in a video conference call next Tuesday to discuss the next step

But Wild says the break, however long it lasts, will give him an opportunity to look further ahead and start planning for next season.

“It might give me and Chris (Millington) the chance to get a foothold into planning for pre-season, and planning for next year, who we want to retain and recruit,” he said.

“It gives us a bit more time to focus on that now with no games, and it might give us a gee up for next season.”

With no income for the foreseeable future, the club could come under a huge financial strain over the next few weeks.

“We’re not a club that’s blessed with a massive financial income, we are one of the lower-end budgets in the league,” Wild said.

“So it’s going to be tough, tough for the chairman to make ends meet.

“But it was tough for the chairman before this, and the amount of finances the chairman puts into this football club is amazing. He deserves great credit for keeping the club going.

“But everybody’s got their tipping point. If you listen to all the chief execs on the radio and the TV over the last few days, from the bottom end of the Championship down, there’s a lot of teams with problems coming over the next few weeks.

“It’s tough times. We’re like any other industry, local businesses, schools, hospitals.

“My mum works for a legal firm and if they shut, they’re not getting paid. So there’s a massive problem coming, not just for employers, but employees.”

Wild does feel his side’s enforced break from action may have come at a good time following poor performances in back-to-back home defeats against Woking and Ebbsfleet.

“Maybe yeah. We’ve watched the (Ebbsfleet) game back and we made one mistake,” he said.
“Fair play to him (Jerome Binnom-Willians), he’s held his hand up straight away, we all make mistakes.

“Apart from that we’ve had lots of chances first-half, they’ve thrown bodies on the line.

“Second-half, instead of going down the sides of them, we’ve cut inside and gone into their strength and their compactness.

“We’ve got to be better in the final third, we’ve got to hold the ball up better, we’ve got to play quicker in the final third.

“These are the messages we’ve been highlighting for the last few weeks, they’re not new messages.

“But we’ve just got to keep going. Alright, the result’s a disaster but the way we played, we were good in the first two-thirds of the pitch but not good enough in the final third.

“I know everybody was walking out effing and jeffing, doom and gloom, and when you look at who we played I understand why.

“But when you take all the emotion out of it and you actually watch the game back, we’ve just got to be a bit better in the final third.

“But the biggest thing in this league is, if you score first, you generally win or draw. So us making a mistake doesn’t do us any favours.

“Because of how teams in this league set-up, as soon as they score, home or away, the first goal is crucial, and if you don’t get it, it’s a tough ask from there on in.”