The great Christmas points give-away

What sort of firm makes its staff work on New Year's eve? Mean spirited buffoons like my employers, that's who. My (ordinarily low) motivation levels are feeling particularly drained today.

As I was away over Christmas I don't really have any strong views about the Histon and Stevenage games, other than that it appears to have been a needless waste of four points. Dodgy penalty decisions or not (someone told me yesterday that Bridgo's theatrical tumble in Sunday's game was "one of the worst penalty decisions I've ever seen") it sounds as if we had enough chances to put both games to bed, and indeed you would usually expect our miserly defence to be reliable in those situations.

You may have gathered from reading my posts that I've always been fairly optimistic about our chances of promotion, but even I'm beginning to worry that this team is lacking what is required to go up. We seem to be short of mental toughness, and whether this comes from the management or the make up of the side I don't know. Managing to hold onto Rendell is obviously a massive step in the right direction, and we can only hope that the rumours of Hatswell's departure prove to be unfounded. With Bolland almost certainly on his way out, it would be a big blow to lose our most consistant player of the year so far as well.

We can perhaps take heart from the example of Exeter, who at this time last year were sitting eighth in the table, with many supporters questioning the future of manager Paul Tisdale. For us to enjoy a similarly glorious conclusion to the season, the Brabinator will need to get a bit extra out of our talented but currently underperforming squad. Whether he is capable of doing this or not may well be the making of him as a manager.