WHAT a difference a week can make in football.

Seven days ago we were looking to really push up into the top six or seven places after winning at Brighton.

But we’ve instead suffered two successive defeats — against Oldham and Brentford — and it’s been very disappointing.

In the Oldham game I felt we produced our worst performance of the season so far.

We were poor and so were they, and I thought the game had 0-0 written all over it before we gave away a late penalty.

Two more penalties then cost us at Brentford on Tuesday night and we just can’t keep on giving them away.

We’re shooting ourselves in the foot and three penalties in two games is just far too many.

The teams hadn’t really hurt us other than that and we’ve ended up getting no points from two games when we could have taken four or at the very least two.

We’re all very disappointed and it’s a big game for us at Stockport now on Saturday because we need to dig in.

I doubt the game there will be one for the purists but the time has come for us to all roll up our sleeves and fight.

We need to dig in and scrap because that’s what games at Stockport are always like.

We have to be ready for that and we really want a win because that would make everything seem much better again.

BRUSH UP FOR PAINT TROPHY

WE start our Johnstone’s Paint Trophy campaign at MK Dons next Tuesday and it’s probably one of the hardest games we could be facing at this stage.

I’ve been lucky enough to have played in the final with Southend before and, with the final now being played at Wembley, it would be amazing if we could do it again.

There is obviously a long way to go before that and we have a small squad so it will be hard with that number of games.

But, while the league remains the priority, it would be great to also have a run in this competition and hopefully we can produce a good performance against MK Dons and get through to the next round.

NEW LADS TUNE IN TO SINGING

ROY O’Donovan and George Friend both got up to sing during the pre-match meal before Tuesday night’s game with Brentford.

Roy had obviously done it before because he was loving it.

He had all the actions with his eyes closed and his arms out, and you could imagine him doing it with a few pints of Guinness round a log-fire.

It was an Irish song he sang and we couldn’t really understand what he was saying but he was really going for it and I think he would like to do it every week now!

George also got up to belt out a song by Lulu which was a good laugh and fair play to them both for doing it.

I’d also like to reassure Simon Francis that he has nothing to worry about when it comes to his weight.

Franno was called fat by a few of the Brentford supporters and he kept on talking about it on the way home.

He thinks it was the cycling shorts he was wearing but I would just like to tell him that he doesn’t need to lay off those chocolates biscuits just yet!