This is a new start and a new beginning for us now.

The free weekend did us a favour because there are a number of lads carrying a few knocks. And from my point of view, it’s another game I’ll hopefully be back for.

We’ve had a rough run over Christmas and it’s important that we look back and learn from our mistakes.

It’s not just down to the manager and coaching staff to point them out – the boys on the pitch have to take responsibility and work out where they could do better. We’ve also got to accept that the standard is higher.

Premier League clubs are normally quite reluctant to loan out to League Two, apart from in my case. But they don’t have a problem chucking players into League One. We’ve seen how good some of these lads are.

I’d never heard of Alex Pritchard but the second I saw he was from Spurs, I thought he had to be good. You can see why he is rated highly after the way he played against us for Swindon.

Then there’s Patrick Bamford, who the lads thought was superb at MK Dons. Chelsea have let him go to Derby now so it shows the standard he’s at.

Notts County also had a couple of really good loans from Aston Villa and Celtic, and you could see their quality.

Given the results we’ve had and the number of draws, we’re actually quite lucky to be only seven points off the play-offs.

Hopefully now we can get that bad run out of the way and start picking up points again. There are plenty of games to go and I still feel we’ve got a good chance of getting in the top six. It’s just getting that confidence back in the lads, and that will come.

Remember last year. Everybody wrote us off when we lost at Exeter and said it was game over. But all of a sudden we put some wins together and look where that took us. That can happen again.