"I'm very confident in this group of players" - Millington remains bullish about Town's promotion push ahead of festive fixtures

The Shaymen face a tough test at Gateshead tomorrow, who are four places and four points above them in the National League table.

Halifax have failed to score in three of their last five games and were knocked out of the FA Trophy on Tuesday night at home to Altrincham on penalties, despite playing for more than an hour against ten men.

"I'm looking forward to it," Millington said of tomorrow's game.

"The two don't really impact each other greatly. Two separate games, two separate competitions.

"It was disappointing to go out of the Trophy but I'm still optimistic about our league campaign."

When asked if it would be as much of a challenge for his side keeping goals out on Saturday as scoring them, Millington said: "As with every team, it'll be a challenge to do both.

"Since Gateshead returned to the National League we've played them four times so far and they've yet to score against us so we want to maintain that run."

The Heed are the second highest scorers in the fifth tier and thrashed Rochdale 5-1 in the FA Trophy in midweek.

"We play well against the better teams, our record is strong against top-half teams both last season and this," Millington said.

"Gateshead will do everything they can to shift us about, to try and move our defenders out of position and exploit us.

"We've got some great finishers in the team but we've got a very, very solid defence.

"We understand tactically what teams are trying to do to create opportunities so we prepare ourselves for that.

"Gateshead are a very expansive team and when we regain it, they're going to have to deal with some really quick, direct, exciting players in the shape of Galvin, Alli, Cosgrave, people like that running at them very quickly with the ball is going to be in the back of their mind when they lose it."

On how his team can start producing more goals again, the Town boss said: "We've got to create with more quality.

"We've had the chance to go back over the game (on Tuesday); 12 opportunities on goal, three or four good chances but we've got to have a bit more composure in the box and players have got to take their chances.

"It's been something we've not been as good as we want to be for a couple of seasons or more.

"If you take Billy Waters out of the equation we've not been prolific for a number of seasons now, so it's an area we've got to continue to apply ourselves to and make ourselves better."

Town's next four games are all against teams above them in the table, and their results in those games could either see The Shaymen move back into the play-off places or the current three point gap to the top seven become bigger.

"My view is that we've got a really strong squad to be able to compete and be in the play-offs come the end of the season and that's what we're focusing on," said Millington.

"We've got a really tough run of games coming up between now and the rearranged fixture against Solihull against very good teams.

"Whether we get ourselves in the play-offs or better, that's clearly possible, given we'll be in a position where we can take points off teams in and around us, or whether we just sit outside, the real telling factor will be where we are come the end of April.

"And I'm very confident in this group of players that we can beat anyone.

"Altrincham are the final team for us to play this season, we've played everyone at least once now, we know what everyone's got.

"We've been in every game and come away from every game believing we should have got something out of it.

"Not many teams can say that in the league, there's teams above us who've had days where they've been convincingly beaten, but no-one can say that about us.

"Of course we haven't won every game and we've dropped points but the fact is we've been in every game and we've come away from every game feeling that we should have at least got something out of it and in a lot of cases, could have won games we didn't.

"So it bodes well going into the second-half of the season, and I've always said we will grow in strength and in quality as the season goes on, so I'm really confident we can finish strongly."

Tomorrow's game kicks-off at 12.30pm as it is live on TNT Sports, but Millington doesn't feel the lunchtime start will cause too much disruption.

"It changes the time of everything really and means we have to do everything that bit earlier," he said.

"It's not ideal but in terms of our preparation it means we just do everything that bit earlier.

"Obviously it'll be a bit of a benefit for Gateshead because they're at home and we have to get up there and get everything prepared a lot earlier but it's a minor thing, it's not something we're particularly worried about."