On Saturday, Millington will try to ruin Barnet’s perfect home record by proving that “we are well capable of being anyone in this division.”
On Saturday, Town manager Chris Millington hopes to end Barnet’s perfect home record.
The Shaymen lost twice in a row for the first time since January, falling to leaders Chesterfield 3-2 on Tuesday night and Dorking 1-0 on Saturday, dropping them to tenth place in the National League.
This season, third-placed Barnet have won five of their five home games, including 2-1 triumph against Aldershot on Tuesday night.
“We’ve got no fear, and you’ve seen that on Tuesday night, we’ve gone toe-to-toe with arguably the best team in the division,” Millington told the Courier.
“Our goal is to finish ahead of them. When you look at their resources, finances, and other things, people will likely think I’m insane for saying this, but we have no fear of anyone.
“However, what we need to do is start winning these games with narrow margins more frequently.
We’ll go to Barnet with a strategy in place and a team of men who are genuinely dedicated to their profession and who are determined to get three points.
In my tenure at the club, we’ve broken many other teams’ winning streaks, and on Saturday, we’ll try to break Barnet’s home winning streak.
“We’ll use every effort to attempt to make it happen. We’ll be totally dedicated.
Millington responded, “We are yeah, whether we’ll do it or not, we’ll only know come five o’clock on Saturday,” when asked if Halifax could defeat Barnet.
However, we have the ability to be anyone in this division.
“I think we demonstrated our ability to do it on Tuesday night, even though we didn’t complete the task.
“Our goal will be to win the game and score three points when we travel there.
We approach every game with a solid plan to try and win it, so that is exactly how we will confront Barnet. “We don’t fear anyone,” the player said.
After his team’s defeat at Chesterfield to a goal in extra time, Millington is convinced there won’t be any hangovers.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re bang up for it, but I don’t see that (poor reaction) happening with this group,” he said.
“Listen, they’re not flawless and fantastic every week; we still have a lot of work to do to develop performance consistency. We are aware of this and are making an effort to fix it.
“However, after a lackluster showing against Dorking, we put up a fantastic show at Chesterfield.
We obviously didn’t receive the outcome we desired, but I’d like to think that everyone who was there would have nothing but appreciation for the players’ effort and dedication.
Halifax gave up a similar cheap goal from a cross into the box against Chesterfield as they did against Dorking, but according to Millington, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that Town has had a strong defensive start to the season.
“We’re still one of the most miserly teams in the division so it’s not like we’re leaking goals – it’s the first time this season we’ve conceded three in a game and it’s against a very, very good team,” he said.
“And I believe the winner came after a foul on our last man, so I don’t think we’re doing too bad out of possession.
“But we’re always looking for areas we can do better and we’ve got a lot we want to work with the players on to help them get better because one of the reasons they come to Halifax Town is to have opportunity to play at this level, but to maintain their place in the team and hopefully drive us to being a promotion contender is reliant on them learning the lessons when things don’t quite go our way.”
It’s at the other end where The Shaymen need to improve more, with only two teams in the fifth tier scoring fewer goals than then this season.
“We always want more. Away from home I think we’re OK, I think we’re actually a very good away team,” Millington said.
“At home we’ve got to do more, without a doubt, we need to control games more, we need to control possession better.
“I think we do an awful lot of good work to nullify oppositions at home and we do an awful lot of good work to get the ball back but my question to the players is do we do enough to actually maintain and control and maintain possession once we do get it back?
“That’s an area we’re working on, you saw it in the Rochdale game in the first-half, that was the first game we’d really started to work heavily on our possession and we felt we did very well at times in that first-half.
“At times on Tuesday night we controlled possession, but we’ve got to certainly do it at home.”
Millington had praise for the travelling Halifax fans at Chesterfield on Tuesday, with the Town fans set for another away trip this weekend.
“I thought the fans were outstanding on Tuesday night – when you’re away at Chesterfield and you watch your team go 2-0 down so early on, clearly it would have been easy for the lads to pack in but it would have been easy for the fans to pack in,” he said.
“But they didn’t, they got right behind them and they drove them on, and they got an extra ten per cent out of the boys because of their reaction.
“It’s phenomenal. We’ve seen it time and again this season, when we got pegged back at Oldham, when we were under the cosh for periods against Rochdale.
“They’ve been outstanding and they deserve credit for the performance the lads put in on Tuesday night as much as we do as staff.”
