DARLINGTON begin a new decade with a match at Spennymoor Town and aiming to achieve something they failed to manage throughout the entirety of the last one: win on New Year’s Day.

That Alun Armstrong was the match-winner last time Quakers took three points on January 1 puts into perspective how long it has been since Darlington fans saw their club start a calendar year with victory.

It was 2005 and away to Scunthorpe United when Armstrong got the only goal of the game, a moment quickly followed by him booked for his celebrations in front of the travelling Quakers fans.

Fifteen years later and, now as the team’s manager, he hopes to again be celebrating in front of what will be a good number of supporters making the short journey to the Brewery Field, all of whom have been buoyed by recent results.

An overdue New Year’s Day win – though Quakers have played only six times on January since 2005, mainly due to postponements - would be a fine way to kickstart 2020.

Victory would also complete a quickfire double over Spennymoor having come out on top 2-1 on Boxing Day, one of a sequence of four successive league victories.

Armstrong, though, is wary of complacency.

He warned: “The minute you take your foot off the gas things can go wrong at the drop of a hat and when that happens confidence can go.

“But since beating Chester 2-0 the lads have kicked on, then there was Solihull when we could’ve won the game, it gave us huge confidence.”

Darlington expect a fired up Spennymoor to be in the mood for revenge having lost at Blackwell Meadows to a penalty, scored by Stephen Thompson, which manager Jason Ainsley vehemently disagreed with.

The result ended Moors’ 13-game unbeaten run, and then they lost 3-1 to Gateshead on Saturday.

Armstrong said: “Spennymoor will be fired up massively, especially after losing to Gateshead.

“They will be hurting at the minute after losing to two of their North-East rivals, so it will be a humdinger.

“I’m sure there will be challenges flying in, but we deserved to win that game on Boxing Day. We were the better side, we were the better side footballing by a long way. They’ve got their way and they are good at it.

“They didn’t cause us that many problems, but they are good at what they do so we’ve got to make sure we’re switched on.”

Seventeen-goal striker Glen Taylor has scored in each of his last three games against Darlington and will again be a threat, but Quakers will need to improve on their weekend showing at Blyth.

Armstrong added: “The lads had a lot of time on the ball in the first 20 minutes, they were moving Blyth all over the place so they started to think it was easy, but Blyth had a good go in the second half.

“If we make the same mistakes and if we play like we did in the second half then we’ll get turned over, but it’s Spennymoor so the lads will not play like that.”

Having been rested on Saturday, Thompson is likely to return to the starting line-up today, but new loan signing Gary Martin will not be on the bench as he is not eligible until January 2.