On a cold wintry day, we were all spared a freezing cold outing to Merseyside as we settled down to watch the Wanderers face Keith Hill’s Tranmere Rovers for the second time within a month, from the relative warmth and comfort of our personal lockdown arenas.

 The 3-0 home defeat had flattered Rovers and our away form is better than our home form with the Wanderers picking up more points on the road.

The new signings had had a week’s training to bed themselves in and last week’s first half performance had given us something to build on.

Ian Evatt made two changes bringing in Andrew Tutte and Ali Crawford for the injured Kieran Lee and the unlucky George Thomason.

Any cunning plans for the match went out of the window in less than five minutes as we gifted them a goal. Not only did the fans get that feeling of deja vu but I think that the team did as well for the rest of the first half.

Things improved marginally in the second half, especially after the introduction of Arthur Gnahoua but by that time we had conceded a penalty the game was lost.

Evatt managed to get himself red carded after the final whistle as he took out his frustrations on the poor performance of the referee but really, he should be taking his frustrations out on the players, most of whom gave far worse performances than the referee.

He also needs to look at himself and his management team to get to the bottom of our inconsistent play. Each week, we do not know which team will turn up. All the good things in last week’s performance went AWOL this week.

Giving the opposition one or two goals start is not a recipe for success. It makes a mockery of the aspirations to play attacking football like Barcelona if our defence has more leaks than United Utilities.

If we sound frustrated, it is because we are. The second half of the season should be about establishing ourselves as a team to be reckoned with.

The inconsistencies will be the ruin of us if we do not get them sorted and they will turn what should be a push for the play-offs into a fight against relegation.