Millington laments important decisions after Shaymen’s defeat against Chesterfield, saying, “It feels like a real body blow.”
After their dramatic 3-2 loss at league-leading Chesterfield, Halifax manager Chris Millington thought his team had played well enough to merit something positive from the encounter.
Prior to Milli Alli and Luke Summerfield’s strikes tying the game for Town, Will Grigg and Tyrone Williams had given the hosts a 2-0 lead.
However, Joe Quigley scored the winning goal for The Spireites in extra time after both teams had a man sent off.
According to Millington, who spoke to the Courier, “I think in many respects it was a good advert for the National League, two very committed teams playing a good standard of football, both going for it and a game decided on really fine margins.”
Being on the wrong side of those thin margins is plain frustrating.
“2-0 down after 23 minutes was definitely not the game-plan.
“Listen, we came here to go after them, to try and win the game.
“Clearly we’re at a place where there’s a very good group of players, a crowd who are really up because of where the team is in the division, and the way they’re playing because they play an exciting brand of football and every game seems to be a 3-2 or a 4-3.
“So we knew we were going to have to be prepared to deal with some of their threats, the threat in the wide area is definitely something you have to deal with when you come to Chesterfield, and also set-pieces, they’ve scored more goals off set-pieces this season so far than they’ve scored using any other method.
“We’d prepared thoroughly for those two threats but we knew some of their vulnerabilities – the high line, we knew that’d be an opportunity for us and we felt, as the game went on and their pressing dropped in intensity, we’d have the opportunity to dominate possession a bit more and I think that’s how it worked out.
“Clearly it’s frustrating to go 1-0 down and I couldn’t see the goal very clearly because it was on the far side, so I’m not exactly sure on the passage of play and how they unpicked us, but it looked from my side like a really slick move, ball goes across the box and a fairly simple finish for a very good footballer.
“So that was frustrating to concede so early, and then conceding off a set-piece when we know what a threat they carry off set-pieces, and we’d prepared to the best of our ability to deal with them.
“Their lad was just more committed to winning the first contact than ours
“You’ve heard me go on about the youthful nature of this group over and over again this season, and a young team at a place like this playing top of the league, and 2-0 down so early, can easily crumble and disintegrate and fall apart.
“But we saw a very resilient, committed group who dug in, pulled themselves back into the game by going in at half-time 2-1 and then in the second-half we felt we could go on and win it, so it’s really disappointing that we didn’t manage to achieve that.”
Millington agreed with the decision to award Town a penalty, and felt they should have had another one before that.
“I felt we were denied a penalty in the first-half when Milli Alli’s drifted past his man, he’s got wrong side of him and received a shoulder in the back,” said Millington.
“Milli Alli is not going down in the box when he’s got the ball at his feet and he’s driving at goal unless somebody brings him down, and it was clearly a shoulder in the back that brought him down.
“So I felt we should have gone in 2-2 because of that.
“I don’t underestimate the challenge of refereeing a game like that where both teams were absolutely, fully committed and the atmosphere was electric, both sets of supporters were right on their mettle, they were fantastic, so I don’t underestimate how difficult it is to referee that.
“But I also believe that there was a foul on Jo Cummings in the build-up to Chesterfield’s winner, the players are certain, it looked like it to me, it looked like it was a clear foul.
“For the ref not to give that at such a crucial moment in such a crucial area of the pitch when it’s a foul on our last man, it feels like a real body blow that.”
Town had Chesterfield on the ropes at 2-2 and with an extra man following Tom Naylor’s dismissal.
“We only had an extra man for ten minutes, and what I know will be levelled at us is that we maintained too many defenders on the pitch,” Millington said.
“But we had to because their significant threat, they have scored the most goals this season off set-pieces and they were putting on Quigley and Banks, who are bigger than any of our lads, so they’ve already got Grimes and Williams on the pitch, they’ve got any number of lads who are bigger than ours and who are going to fly in and attack the ball.
“So it’s a significant threat. We’re looking for how we can withdraw a defender to add an Andrew Oluwabori or a Max Wright to give us more attacking intent, but you’re leaving yourselves really exposed.
“I know had we done that and then been sucker-punched and lost 3-2 off a set-piece when we had the extra man, that would have been a catastrophe and I wasn’t willing to risk that given the amount of work the lads had put in.
“We did switch to two up top, we pushed the wing-backs on higher and I felt we were starting to wear them down with the possession and had we got that extra four or five minutes, plus the additional nine or ten, I think we’d have certainly created a lot more clear-cut chances, who knows whether we’d have won the game, but we didn’t.
“There were significant moments in the game, significant turning points where Aaron Cosgrave, who’s put a right shift in for the team first-half he’s done a lot of work without the ball, second-half you’ve started to see some of the intelligent runs off the shoulder and he’s threatening in-behind and causing all kinds of havoc, and in a bizarre twist of fate his threat in-behind and his run on that through ball has actually resulted in him getting a dead leg and having to come off.
“That was a turning point for us, and then you’ve got obviously Adam Senior’s red card, which I think Adam’s committed to try and win the ball back, he hasn’t. Is it a red card? I’m not sure, the players are telling me there was some disagreement between the officials in that the linesman thought it was a yellow and the ref immediately went for a red.
“I’ll have to see that back to be absolutely clear, but look, we’ve got beat, we have to take our medicine, and learn our lessons because there are definitely things we need to do better.
“But I felt we were good for a draw tonight and we had a real strong chance of going on to win the game.”
Aaron Cosgrave, Angelo Cappello and Jack Evans came in for Town in place of Rob Harker, Jamie Cooke and Summerfield.
“It was a mixed bag of reasons,” Millington said of the changes. “We’ve got players in the squad who’ve waited patiently – Aaron Cosgrave being one of them, and considering we’ve had a lack of goal threat he deserves his opportunity.
“Similarly with having Angelo back, we just felt he might be able to help us maintain possession high up the pitch and I thought he did that, I thought he did well tonight for large portions.
“He can do better, as can Milli and a few others who play in the ten. We can be a bit better when we do win it back at hurting teams with a quick counter or maintaining possession so we can drop them low, so that’s something we need to learn quickly.
“And then with Summers, we’ve got Flo Hoti and Kane Thomson-Sommers who are back in training but neither are ready to start football matches yet, so we are limited in what we’ve got for the two central midfield positions.
“So we’ve got to manage that position to some degree at the moment so we don’t end up short of players.
“Jack Hunter got a yellow card early in the first-half and it can easily change if one of them gets an injury or a red card, then we haven’t got any match-fit central midfielders to fulfil the roles.”
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