Halifax Town v Oldham Athletic: Why Chris Millington is not concerned by low-scoring start to season

The Shaymen have only scored five in their opening seven Conference games, drawing a blank in Saturday's stalemate at Hartlepool United, but the manager is convinced it will turn.

"Flo Hoti's only a couple of games back, Billy Waters has just had his first game since the back end of last season (having joined on loan from Wrexham), Scott High's come into the club last week (on loan from Huddersfield Town), Andrew Oluwabori is now getting the attention of two or three defenders,” he pointed out.

"So the players are learning how to deal with things and get into the flow this season, but it'll come.

"There's a lot of quality in the team and if we play as well as that with the ball, then there won't be many games when we don't score.

"We knew August was going to be difficult anyway because of the opposition we were going to face, but it was made even tougher by injury problems.

"Now we're seeing all the different aspects of our play coming together."

And Millington expects a midweek Roses game on home turf to produce the sort of atmosphere that can help against former Premier League opponents.

"The Shay when there's a decent away following – there's no place better," he said.

"They're one of the big-hitters in the league but we don't look at that, we look at 11 men v 11 men, the tactics, the way we can hurt them, the way we can beat them and we'll look to impose ourselves on the game."