IN the big leagues, January can make or break a season thanks to the transfer window. While we don’t have 31 days to scramble around finding players, this month feels like it’s a crossroads for our season. Although our league position is that of a team competing to make the playoffs, our form over the last two months is that of a team battling to avoid relegation. Whether we continue our playoff challenge or start slipping down the table will depend on what Martin Gray does in the coming weeks.

For me, it felt like there was an inevitability about the defeat on Saturday to Nuneaton. I didn't feel particularly confident either before the game or throughout. Our equaliser out of nowhere almost felt like a winner only for our defensive inadequacies to be shown up once again.

Post-game, Gray said it was not good enough and that changes will be made. I have no doubt that he is very much still focused on making the playoffs. He’s highlighted our poor defending – it doesn’t take Alan Hansen to see we have a problem – and yet his solution is straight out of the Martin Gray playbook; we need more attacking players. It’s like Donald Trump coming out and saying he should probably use Twitter more to get his message across.

Considering we continued our run of averaging two goals conceded since the start of November, let’s be brutally honest here; any striker who could mitigate our team’s ability to concede goals would be well out of our price range. I’m not sure Ronaldo or Messi could score goals at a substantial enough rate to turn draws and defeats into wins considering we effectively need two goals to secure a single point.

For me, there are two issues at play for Martin Gray, neither of which will be particularly popular with the fans. Firstly, we need better defenders. That’s possibly a bit simplistic but the fact is our defenders, probably with the exception of Liam Marrs, just can’t perform at a high enough level on a consistent basis. For example, on Boxing Day, Gary Brown gave a masterclass in taking Tom Denton out of the game. That’s no mean feat. His performance was excellent. Fast forward to the Nuneaton game and Brown was on one-man self-destruction mode.

Meanwhile, in front of the defence, Gray has got to get his head around how he sets up his midfield. For me, 4-4-2 with two wingers and two strikers is a luxury we can ill-afford in a division where midfields are packed. We are simply too expansive. Great when we have the ball but wide open, offering little protection to the defence when we don’t.

Whether we sign them now or in the summer, new defenders are surely a priority Gray must focus on. I can see some fans being disappointed at their favourite players being either moved on or not played but that’s the nature of continuous improvement of the team. Meanwhile, playing three in midfield at the sacrifice of either a striker or a winger would probably see calls of Gray being too negative. However, the manager must find a more balanced approach for a league that is far more tactically astute and more capable of punishing tactical inadequacies than we’ve had to deal with over the previous four seasons.

Brian Little opted to play five at the back in the 1989-90 Conference season as that worked well for Lincoln City the previous year. Martin Gray has got to follow Little’s lead and take a more pragmatic, horses-for-courses approach. If he adapts to suit the league, the playoffs are in reach. Continue with the current approach and a mid-table finish feels more likely.