We have a fantastic squad here at Gillingham and just need to get the points and start moving up the table.

Nobody likes hard work but you have to do it. We don’t have many Tuesday games now, so we can revisit the fitness work, get the boys in the gym and get the groundwork in.

Stevenage were a hard-working team last year and are in League 1 now after being hard to beat and defensively solid. The nights are getting darker and weather colder and like Stan Ternant used to say, the players have to play with a chuckle in their boots and when the whistle blows and the ball moves, you move.

Last weekend at Morecambe was difficult and it didn’t start well after we got stuck on the coach for almost 10 hours on Friday. Every road we turned down was gridlocked.

We analyse everything and looked at the reasons why we didn’t get the result.

We had more of the possession and they had two shots and scored twice.

We didn’t test their keeper enough and although we had a lot of play, it petered out on the edge of the box.

They looked up for it and as if they wanted the game more than our players. They are a team of hard working players, who fight for each other and every ball and it showed. We didn’t show that same attitude.

The players were back in on Monday and we had a meeting to put a few things right and get a few things off our chest.

Everyone says we have the best squad in the league and the players have to show that they are the best. You can’t just expect people to turn up and steamroll them.

They need to show the effort, drive and commitment and passion like we showed against Oxford.

If we did that, we would have easily beaten Morecambe. For some reason, the spark wasn’t there.

The Bayo factor comes into play this weekend as we welcome Northampton and former player Adebayo Akinfenwa to Priestfield.

Bayo is a great lad and a great character in the dressing room. He will want to come and put one over his former team-mates.

He is one of the best target men in the league for holding the ball up but we have one of our own in Danny Kedwell.

If he comes back in, we have got a player who can hold the ball up just as well and bring players in as Bayo can.

The players know it wasn’t good enough against Morecambe and hopefully we can now get the right result against Northampton this weekend.