FC Halifax Town: No need for any doom and gloom, says McAlinden

Pete Wild’s table-toppers are without a win in three after consecutive defeats to Harrogate and Boreham Wood and a draw with Chorley, all at The Shay.

They are back on the road on Saturday at second-placed Bromley before another long trip to Sutton on Tuesday.

McAlinden says he has sensed nerves among the Town supporters of late, but doesn’t think that should be the case.

When asked what his message to the fans is, the striker, who is Town’s top-scorer with seven goals, said: “Don’t panic, we’re giving our all. People are obviously not happy with us, which they’re entitled to be, but I think there’s that bit of a nervous aura around the place at the minute.

“Everyone can feel it, as much as you don’t want to and you try to put it to the back of your mind. But I don’t think it’s a place we should be in.

“We’re top of the league, we’ve had a little blip at home. If you win all your home games you’re doing well, but we’re winning all our away games at the minute.

“But if you keep putting points on the board you’re where you want to be.

“Yes we can improve at home, and it’s something we’re definitely going to try and do. But we’re still putting points on the board, and we’re still top, so we can’t be all doom and gloom and think it’s all over, because that’s not the situation.

“We’re doing well, and hopefully we can just tweak little things, and we’ll be back to where we were at the start of the season at home.”

McAlinden doesn’t think too much should be read into Halifax’s dip in form.

“I don’t think it’s rip-it-up-and-start-again territory yet,” he said. “We’re top of the league, we’re playing some good football at times.

“We’re not getting in-front in games, whereas before we were getting in-front, then digging in and turning the screw.

“But we’ve got to find a different way to come out on top.”

Despite Town looking badly out-of-sorts last Saturday, McAlinden doesn’t believe the team will go to second-placed Bromley on Saturday with any trepidation.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ve gone anywhere this year and held back or sat back, we go and hit teams head on,” he said.

“They’re going to come out thinking they can win the game and we’re definitely going to do the same.

“We’ll go there, we’ll put our game plan to use whatever way we decide to go, and we’ll try to win the game.

“We’ve had two really good away performances and results so we’ll go into the game confident, knowing that we can give them a good game.”

McAlinden admits the Town squad were “very disappointed” with their 2-1 FA Cup defeat to Harrogate last Saturday.

“We wanted to progress in the tournament but it is what it is. We’ve got to just get on with it and hopefully we can put things right and when we go to Bromley we can put on a better show.”

When asked why he thought Town seemed to have taken a dip in form of late, McAlinden said: “I think if we knew that we’d have put it right from previous weeks, because it’s been coming the last few games.

“We’ve been trying all sorts to put it right and it’s just not going our way at the minute. I think everyone’s a bit doom and gloom at the minute but we’re still top of the league and there’s still a long way to go in the season.

“We started the season really well. I don’t think the game plan’s changed, I think people are not allowing our game plan to come out as much, which is difficult to overcome.
“If we knew how to overcome that then we might as well have won the league already.

“It’s not going to be the case, people are going to come here and make it tough for us, and we’ve got to find a way to overcome that.

“We tried something a bit different and it hasn’t gone our way. It was a tough start to the game and it seems at the minute we can’t put our finger on how to put it right.

“But we’ll do all we can to help each other and work hard on the training ground, and hopefully we can solve the problem.”

Does McAlinden believe there is any lack of confidence due to The Shaymen’s recent results?

“I wouldn’t have thought so because before this little blip we were unbeatable,” he said. ”You’re not going to win every week. We feel like we’re doing everything right, we’ve had a chat in the changing room, we want to do everything right and we feel like we’re working hard, but there’s just something that’s not clicking at the minute.

“Hopefully we can put our finger on that sooner rather than later and get going again.”

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