HARTLEPOOL United manager Graeme Lee hopes last night’s win over Barrow is the victory that make them start looking up the table rather than over their shoulder.

Pools sealed a first league victory in seven games as a brilliant brace from Luke Molyneux and a first goal for Omar Bogle did the damage in a 3-1 victory at the Suit Direct Stadium.

It’s just their second win out of 14 games in League Two. The victory came at a great time for Pools who saw teams below them in the table also pick up valuable wins last night. They’ve climbed up to 15th in the table but remain nine points above the dropzone.

The gap to the bottom two is still considerable but the manager is quick to point out that there is plenty of games left to be played this season for Pools to finish in a comfortable position.

Lee said: “Cup runs have been great but the league has been the biggest priority for me.

“It’s massive. You look at the two bottom teams have both won tonight so them three points are massive for us tonight to keep that distance.

“But I look and we’ve got games in hand on teams and we’ve got Crawley on Saturday. They are on 40 points but we got there with a game in hand, we beat them on Saturday and we go within three points of them.

“You can look both ways. Wins are going to make you look up and that’s what we want to do. We need to focus on us. The first half performance, we were excellent and we need to take that momentum now.

“We all get nervous and look the wrong way at times. But you start looking the other way and you think can we start picking a few off? Can we start picking them points up? And you never know.

“Like I said, we’ve got 17 or 18 games left of the season. It’s a lot of points to be played for. Performances like that, and even in the Exeter game I thought before the sending off, we look like a good team in this league.

“But the performances with scoring goals and getting wins, you don’t know where we are going to end up.”

Prior to last night’s win over Barrow, Pools had scored just one league goal in their last four. It was the first time they netted three times in a game under Lee.

Did the manager think it was the best game he’d been in charge of as manager?

Lee replied: “I enjoyed the first half but I enjoyed the first half of the Exeter game.

“Even though I am looking at the clock and thinking ‘that’s going slow’, it’s nice to be going into a game where you go into the last ten minutes and you have got a two goal cushion.

“We’ve scored three goals and I thought I might be able to smile here but you don’t!

“We want to score goals, we want to create chances and today we did. We took our chances at the right time to come back from a fantastic goal by them. Bounce straight back and score three.”

Next up for Pools is a trip to Crawley at the weekend following by a tough game against second place Tranmere Rovers next Tuesday.