IT’S now time for the cup competitions again as we kick off a very tough week at home to Oldham Athletic in the FA Cup tomorrow.

They’re a hard working, heavy hitting League One side who are in form and scoring plenty of goals so it will be a very difficult test.

They have some excellent attacking players with the likes of Kuqi, Simpson and Taylor in their team.

But, while we know it will be tough, it will also be refreshing to come up against a team looking to attack us rather than just sitting back to frustrate us which is what I expect most teams will now do at Roots Hall in the league.

Having a Scottish manager is obviously the secret to Oldham’s success and Paul Dickov has done a very good job since taking over.

He isn’t the only Scottish manager doing well as there’s Malky Mackay at Cardiff and now Derek McInnes at Bristol City.

There’s obviously still the likes of Alex Ferguson and David Moyes and I really do think it’s because the Scottish managers are more passionate and vociferous.

They also have a huge will to win and I think that does make a difference.

I certainly have that and it would be great if we could get in to the third round of the FA Cup.

I haven’t had much success in the competition during the years but I did once manage Plymouth against Arsenal in the third round and that made the club £1million.

It goes to show what can be possible but we have a busy period coming up and I have to try and keep the team fresh.

We play Swindon Town in the area semi-final of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy on Tuesday before we have what I consider to be our biggest game of the season at third placed Cheltenham the following weekend.

They will all be difficult line-ups for me to pick but we do have players with knocks and others who are one booking away from a ban so that will certainly come in to consideration.

Having said all that, we have the momentum behind us at the moment and we want to keep the unbeaten run we’re on going for as long as we possibly can.

The games will continue to come thick and fast for us and what happens between now and January will definitely decide what business we decide to do once the transfer window opens.

We do have a small squad and we were unable to strengthen it before the deadline passed for loan signings.

But it would have been difficult to suddenly bring a player in and leave somebody out who when we haven’t lost for 16 games.

However, everything has been put in to perspective this week by the sudden death of the Wales manager Gary Speed.

Our paths had crossed a couple of times since he got the Wales job.

He was a very nice man and I have been really saddened by the news.

Nobody seems to know why it’s happened and I’d like to pass my sincere condolences on to his friends and family.

JJ UPDATE

THE club have announced that we will be holding a thorough investigation in to Jemal Johnson’s conduct following his arrest last week.

He has been suspended for 14 days but we may well make a decision quicker than that.

We will dissect all the information we have but I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment too much about the situation at this stage.

I know people have questioned why the club’s reaction has been different to when Ryan Hall got in trouble earlier on this year.

But I think they need to know the full facts before passing a comment like that.

Now is not the time to be explaining things but I’m sure the club will make another announcement when the time is right and when a final decision has been made.