It is that time of the year when we don our ‘Santa is a Wanderer’ hats, enter in to the spirit of peace and goodwill and sing ‘All we want for Christmas is three points’.

Alas, the Government kiboshed our hopes of seeing the Wanderers live again as they failed to countenance our promotion to Tier 2.

However, well done to the ‘Cheltenham Six’ who managed to watch the Wanderers’ brilliant last-minute victory on Tuesday night.

I had to dampen the pangs of jealousy and rewrite my letter to Santa, pleading to join in sooner rather than later this season.

At least we could avoid the Christmas shopping and head for the sanctuary of iFollow with my friends in the Bolton FM studio, for the welcome return of Keith Hill and former favourites, Jay Spearing, Liam Feeney and Kaiyne Woolery, albeit in Tranmere Rovers colours these days.

There seems to be a bit of rivalry built up between the fans, mainly because of the nonsensical antics of Messrs King and Aldridge in the 90s.

Whilst a bit of healthy rivalry is good between fans, we should not let it stoop to abusive levels.

Ian Evatt sprung a surprise with the return of Harry Brockbank in place of Reiss Greenidge.

Hopes were high that we could carry on the good work from Cheltenham and for the first 15 minutes, everything was going according to script.

We threatened to overwhelm them and could have been two or three up. However, we missed those chances and paid for it as Tranmere settled into the game and were gifted all three goals, the last one by the referee.

Other than a brief flurry at the beginning of the second half, we just were not at the races.

As the game began to swing against us, we had nobody to combat that and get us back into the game.

The inconsistency is equally frustrating and difficult to understand.

I am sure that Evatt is aware of that and is as mystified as the rest of us. I think that he has done well up to now, given that he had to start from nothing.

The January transfer window is the Phase 2 opportunity to strengthen the squad. These will be crucial decisions towards the redevelopment of our club.

Saturday was still better than shopping, but it was close.