CHRISTMAS is always a very important time of the season.

And it will be no different for us this year.

We play three times in the space of eight days and will be looking to get ourselves back on track.

Aldershot are up first and that will be a difficult game because they’re a very tight unit.

They’ve only conceded nine goals in the league and will make it hard for us.

We had trouble against them last season as we lost at their ground and drew at Roots Hall.

But this time we’re going in to having had a bit of a break and I’m hopeful that will make a difference.

Having watched the Bradford game again I really do think that playing at Oldham on the Tuesday night took an awful lot out of the team.

In hindsight, I should maybe have made more changes than I did to give us more freshness as we definitely looked leggy.

The game came 24 hours too early for us as our bad run continued but we’re still in a fantastic position in the league.

However, we now need to push on again and start getting more points because the team has lost its way a little bit recently.

It’s strange because we haven’t changed our style or the side too much early but we’re not scoring the number of goals that we were a few months ago and we’ve been conceding some sloppy ones too.

That’s disappointed us all but we’re very determined to put that right which is what we will have to do if we are to maintain our current league position.

There will be new signings coming in to help us out with that too and we’ve had some long meetings this week to update our targets.

We’ve spent hours on the phone to agents trying to sort things out and we will be bringing people in.

There’s no ifs, buts or maybes about that either because our rivals will be bringing in three or four players so we need to make signings too.

At the same time, there are certain players on the periphery of things here who maybe need to go and find new homes.

The only way you can be a footballer is by playing games on a Saturday and if you’re not doing that then it defeats the purpose so I will be talking to a few of the squad about that soon.

I think we have several players who would benefit from moving on, just like Jemal Johnson will be doing.

A decision has now been made by the club and Jemal’s been given 14 days notice of our intention to terminate his contract.

That’s a road nobody wants to have to go down and it’s disappointing.

We will also soon have to make up our mind about Luke Daniels’ future.

His loan from West Bromwich Albion expires at the start of January and we will need to sit down, have a look at our budget and see what is the best way forward.

But right now we’re all focused on playing Aldershot and we will be in on Christmas Day to train which I think is the norm in professional football.

I won’t be cooking for any of the squad this year as they’re all a bit more settled but I hope all Southend fans have a great Christmas.

And I also hope we can get some good results to make it an even better time for us all.