FC Halifax Town: "I thought it was a really naïve performance," says assistant boss Millington

Zak Dearnley, Gerry McDonagh and Jamie Thomas scored for Halifax, but The Shaymen were second best on the night and were deservedly dumped out by an impressive home side.

"I thought it was a really naive performance," said Millington, who took charge of the Halifax team for the game.

"I thought the lads were really shocked when they didn't have the normal time on the ball, and that was largely down to the energy of Liversedge, but also down to the fact that it was taking them three, and sometimes four, touches to get the ball under control because it was quite a bobbly surface.

"Then obviously we were a couple of goals behind early on and we never really regained any composure after that.

"We never really recovered from that start."

As expected, Town made wholesale changes to their starting 11, but still included players who have featured regularly for the first-team this season, including captain for the night Jordan Slew, Harvey Gilmour, Jesse Debrah and Jay Benn, as well as new signings Dearnley and Thomas.

"Going into the game, we want to maintain the standards we've set across the season so far," Millington said.

"So they're around being organised, pressing out of possession and having a level of quality in possession, they're the most important things, that we see those traits coming out across the team and through the individuals in the team.

"And there certainly wasn't enough of that.

"The next layer in a fixture like this is it's an opportunity for lads to get much-needed minutes in their legs, there's a number of lads who haven't played a number of minutes for a significant amount of time in competitive football, so it was an opportunity for them to get some minutes.

"Then you scratch the surface a bit further and you're starting to say, who can play their way into contention for games coming up.

"So there are different motivators going on for lads, but one of them is to put yourself in the gaffer's thoughts for the upcoming games."