"I agree with the fans when they say it's not good enough," says Millington after dreadful defeat to Scunthorpe

The Shaymen missed out on the chance to make up lost ground on the play-off places as they lost to Cameron Wilson's first-half goal thanks to an abject performance at The Shay in-front of the BT Sport cameras.

"Very angry, very disappointed, very frustrated," Millington said after the game.

"There wasn't enough about us, not enough energy.

"One sloppy goal we concede and they've not had to work hard enough for the result.

"We've huffed and puffed and put balls into the box, we've had 15 plus set-pieces delivered into the box and we're not working hard enough to put the ball in the back of the net.

"It feels a bit like some of the lads don't understand quite what's at stake for the season.

"We talked about what we want to try and achieve, where we think we can go as a group, but then (we've had) another opportunity to deliver and we've failed to do it."

The result came 17 days after Town's disappointing defeat at Torquay, from which The Shaymen made no improvement.

"The lack of games and lack of intensity to the (training) programme is certainly something that doesn't help," said Millington.

"Missing key players, the likes of Summerfield, Spence, Warburton, who all bring different things to the team in terms of quality, energy and goal threat, certainly doesn't help.

"And silly mistakes. Scunthorpe have done more defending than us tonight, we've had more possession, more territory, but they're not making the mistakes we're making.

"The chances they've had, we've given them. They haven't had to work for them.

"OK, we've not been pretty, we've not been slick and we've not been attractive, but the lads have worked to get balls in the box and again, similar to the set-pieces, no blue shirts on the end of them.

"So it's another game, another opposition where all we've got to do is keep a clean sheet and then you expect us to go on and win it, and we've failed to keep a clean sheet.

"But equally as important is having somebody who's hungry enough and has that desire and that ability to get on the end of some of the balls that are going in the box, which at the moment, we're sorely lacking."

The final whistle was greeted with boos from the Halifax fans, with the odd call for Millington to go.

"It's an incredibly frustrating time for all of us, and I think there's a certain section of the fans who think I don't care," said the Town boss.

"But believe me, this us all I think about. It's all I feel, all the time.

"We're lacking, as a group, in certain respects.

"We've had some incredible challenges in terns of player availability, and there's been some mistakes in terms of our expectations of some of the players we've brought in, who unfortunately haven't been able to do what we expected them to be able to do.

"So, absolutely, I agree with the fans when they say there have been mistakes.

"Absolutely, I agree with the fans when they say it's not good enough and we expect more.

"I disagree when they think I'm not the right man for the job, because I care dearly, I've got the skill set, I've been an important part of building a team over the last three seasons that was successful and I've got a number of challenges on my hands at the moment, which have been part of an incredibly challenging season, which I know I'm able to put right.

"I completely understand the frustrations of the fans, I live it, breathe it, every minute of every day.

"And I look forward to the time when the fans are actually going away from our games happy, as they were only a few weeks ago, with hope and expectation."

When asked if the current group of players was good enough, Millington said: "At the moment, they're not good enough as a group, because we're losing games like that tonight.

"So we've got to be better.

"There's a lot of talent within the group.

"I believe the majority of them care deeply about being successful for this football club.

"It's possible that some don't care enough, but also we need to have our best players available for a consistent period of time to really be able to understand the potential within the group.

"And unfortunately that's not happened this season.

"We had Jesse Debrah missing for all of November, we've had Jamie Stott out for four or five weeks, we've had Luke Summerfield out for a significant amount of time, Kian Spence missed pretty much all of August and now all of January, Matty Warburton's season's been very stop-start, Yamen Osawe has got an incredible level of ability but how often's he been fully available for us? Not often enough.

"So any team missing that number of really important players is going to find it difficult."

Not for the first time this season, some Town fans are questioning whether Millington is the right man to take the club forward.

"I know the buck always stops with the management team, but I think the fans, aside from their frustrations and their anger at the performances, understand where we're at in terms of what players we've got available," he said.

"I think they understand the shortcomings we've got as a result of certain players not being available."

Despite key players missing, Millington agreed that his team still had enough to have beaten a Scunthorpe team who hadn't won away all season and came into the match bottom of the table.

"I'd agree, yeah I think we should have enough to beat them," he said.

"The game tonight is decided on a poor error.

"We should have had enough, and we shouldn't need to keep a clean sheet to win a game, we should be able to still come back from that error and go on to win it.

"But this isn't a new issue, we've come up against it at Torquay and Yeovil in the not too distant past.

"So that's going to result in certain changes for us going forward in terms of shape and personnel because that situation can't continue."

Jordan Slew, Angelo Capello and Rob Harker all came into the team, but all three ended up being taken off.

"Angelo came off with cramp, he just ran out of legs," Millington said.

"It was Slewy's first tart in a couple of months, he came into the team at the 11th hour.

"Rob's been working hard in training and doing everything to give himself a chance so would have started in the Harrow game had it gone ahead.

"We felt he'd earned the opportunity to start tonight."

When asked what he had said to his players after the game, Millington said: "I think the overriding emotion in the dressing room, including myself, is frustration because we're not helping ourselves in these moments.

"We're showing a bit of naivety as a group, we concede a soft goal but then late on when we're chasing the game, we're still giving away silly free-kicks that take any possible momentum out of the game we can build.

"So there's a frustration that occurred against Altrincham that resulted in Conn-Clarke scoring, and it killed any chance of us getting something late on in this game.

"There are certain aspects of our play where we've just got to grow up and learn how to manage games in the sense that, if we're winning we know how to manage games to see them out and if we're chasing a game we have to be cuter about how we go about chasing the game."

Read more from the Town boss on the Courier website tomorrow.