Robbie Stelling previews Hartlepool United's next fixtures as Pools look to avoid being sucked into a relegation battle.
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00:00This next block of fixtures is going to be really important.
00:02Pools are at home to Songha Helmholtz, who have had a similar trajectory, actually,
00:06to themselves in the last couple of months, since they lost manager Andy Wing to Barrow.
00:11Matt Tang has come in and he's had a difficult start. They've fallen away
00:17as well, and fans are pretty frustrated there, too.
00:22They then host Ebbsley, who are bottom, Boston United, who are second bottom,
00:26and they go to Halifax as well in between those two games.
00:31If you look at their end of the season, I think they've got Gateshead, Forest Green,
00:35Rochdale and Oldham, all sides challenging for the playoffs at the very least.
00:39So that's going to be a really difficult end to the campaign.
00:43The one thing you don't want to do is you don't want to go into those final four matches still
00:46needing points to secure the National League status, of course.
00:50Pools will fail so they can go and get something from all of those games,
00:53but you don't want to leave it to chance.
00:55I think you've got to make the most of a run of winnable games here.
01:00Lindbergh is notoriously difficult to predict when it comes to team selection.
01:05I've certainly been feeling the heat of that, Rich, when it comes to my
01:08predicted 11s. Again, he surprised us a bit by going back to the 3-5-2.
01:14I've said in the past I would really like to see him pin his colours to the mast and say,
01:18this is my best team. I will change things occasionally, but I want to give
01:23a set of 11 players a run in the side.
01:27Because watching them on Saturday against Eastley, while there were some
01:32positive signs, it looked a bit like a side that had rarely played together.