"It isn't acceptable" - Millington says Town were nowhere near good enough after 2-0 defeat at Wealdstone

The Shaymen boss pulled no punches after his team fell to a disappointing defeat after a hugely underwhelming display at Grosvenor Vale.

"Poor, started off same as we did against Fylde," he told the Courier.

"We've worked on it, we've made lads aware, we've given them individual strategies, we've had team strategies to make sure we were more front-footed and it failed to work.

So there's a serious amount of thinking got to go on about personnel and how we proceed."

When asked why it failed to work, Millington said: "Because players didn't turn up, it's not good enough.

"Some players, one week they're absolute world beaters, next week they're bang average. It's not good enough.

"They need some consistency. You can excuse the odd poor performance or the odd spell in games when they're young players but the fact is some of them are repeating the same mistakes over and over again and giving us under-par performances and it isn't acceptable."

Town were slow out of the blocks again, conceding after just 12 minutes.

"It was the first 20 minutes," Millington said. "27th minute we had a good break and a really dangerous attack but up until that we looked scared, we looked nervous, we didn't look our usual selves, we didn't seem to understand what we were doing out of possession but clearly we do because for 25 games this season we've been incredibly good out of possession.

"But the last few, we seem to have lost our way.

"People have got to turn up, and they've got to turn up quickly."

Halifax have now conceded in the opening 15 minutes in each of their last three games.

"First 15, last 15, it doesn't really matter, the point is we've got to play better and we're in a difficult spell at the moment of not performing to the high standards we've set ourselves," Millington said.

"We're not as hard to beat as we should be and we're second best far too often, so when opposition score is a less important point, the fact is we've got to play better and we've got to compete more, and at the moment there's too many who are starting on the back foot.

"At times it's embarrassing to be associated with and they need to turn up because it's not good enough."

When asked whether some of his players were struggling with a lack of confidence, Millington said: "I think sometimes it's young players, we've got a lot of young players, we go on about that and we praise them and we give them a bit of latitude because of that but at the moment they're getting too comfortable I think, some of them.

"They need to realise the harsh realities of senior and first-team football and that is, if you don't perform you come out of the team and if you let us down more than that then you're out of the squad and others come in.

"They need to man up and start performing."

The Shaymen huffed and puffed in the second-half but didn't produce enough quality to level the score.

"We had loads of possession," Millington said, "from 27 minutes on we dominated possession and the possession stats will probably be heavily in our favour.

"But the keeper's not had to make a save, we've worked the ball around their defence but they dropped into a 5-4-1, we know that, and they're hard to break down.

"If you give teams the lead in this division then it's always going to be very difficult.

"We had enough to get back in the game against Fylde on Tuesday, today we were up against a better quality team who made it more difficult for us."

On how his team get themselves out of their blip, Millington said: "We're experienced enough to know what the National League is like, every team has it's spell like this where results don't go their way, performances aren't quite up to par.

"So we know we'll get out of it, we got out of three or four ruts like this last season, so we're well experienced at it.

"But the emphasis has got to be on the players at the moment because they've got to turn up, they've got to do more, they've got to run harder, they've got to win more first contacts, they've got to land on more second balls, they've got to win more duels because that's what we were doing when we were dong well, and since the last few games where we've not done as well, that's the big factor that's changed, we're not winning enough duels, we're not winning enough first contacts and we're not landing on enough second balls anywhere on the pitch, so it's got to improve."