I wasn't going to write any more blogs after we won the title last season - going out at the top if you like - but just when you all thought you'd got away with it this current situation has prompted me to hit the keyboard again. Sorry about that!
I for one didn't expect us to be in this situation, and I don't think I was alone.
We were meant to ride on a large wave of momentum, sweeping League Two before us, our team of champions striding on to further glories, on an unstoppable tide.
Maybe the expectations were too high, but that's what was supposed to happen, with Holman and Wright banging them in, Storer and Pell tackling everything that moves and Downes and Parslow keeping strikers at bay for fun. Just like last season, eh?
Only it hasn't worked out like that. At all.
I actually don't think we started too badly. We seemed to be feeling our way into the level, but, somewhat ironically since our best performance of the season at Crewe, the wheels have started falling off.
Against some of the better sides, we've done quite well. A draw at Carlisle - yes, we were battered, but were seconds from a win, and a last-minute loss at Plymouth when we played pretty well, for instance.
But there has been a lot of dross lately. the last 45 minutes at Sutton (so I am told), one and three-quarter games against Colchester, Barnet, the first half against Wycombe.
So we sit 23rd, and results and tables don't lie even if overall we might not think we are the second-worst team in the division, the hard facts say that we are, and we need to dig ourselves out of it.
January is always a big month, with the window and having made a bit of a Horlicks of recruitment in the summer as it has transpired, it becomes even bigger.
By the end of February, we will play many of the sides around us in the bottom half of the table again, including Accrington, Crewe, Newport, Notts County and Stevenage, so by the time the National Hunt Festival takes over the town, we'll have a better idea of where we stand.
The manager
Any manager with his team in 23rd place, having won four games out of 23, could really have no argument if their job was under question.
That Gary Johnson's isn't, or at least doesn't seem to be, is only because of the miracle he performed last season to sign 18 players in no time and win the National League by 10 points.
He opted - and the vast majority of fans had no issue with this as they chanted 'sign them on' after chairing them off the pitch last April - to put his trust in his championship-winning squad, bar one, who opted to leave of his own volition.
No problem with that. But what he failed to do was supplement it with players capable of making the squad stronger and ready for the demands of the higher level.
Of the six loans he brought in, four (Smith, Suliman, Whitehead and Arthur) were abject failures.
Then, having been able to get Dillon Phillips back, Russell Griffiths was recruited, and having started promisingly saw his form become erratic and now he has gone too.
Only Rob Dickie, tried and trusted last season, was anywhere near a success, but he hasn't hit the heights of last season, like many of those around him.
The other summer arrival was James Jennings, who played twice early on before being loaned to Morecambe - a quick admission that the move had not worked out.
Alex Cooper's arrival and four-minute appearance only served to sum the season's recruitment up really - from the sublime to the poor in a matter of months.
From early in the season, Johnson has criticised the players for their inability to make the step up to the level - even after they played heroically at Carlisle and nearly won the game, he was critical, which surprised me.
Some of it has been justified at times, but some of it has also been over the top - and I can see the argument from some fans that this deflates confidence - and also seems to be the manager deflecting the criticism away from himself.
There is no doubt he is feeling the pressure - he has in recent weeks picked fights with the Echo over the transfer window poll and over speculation stories about signings and departures, saying there is a 'mole' in the camp.
I am not sure I would go picking fights with people when I've won four games out of 23 - I'd want these people nominally on my side in tough times like this.
In his defence, he has not been helped by injuries and suspensions right from the off - Storer's eight games to start with, then an injury,and then three more on top, Pell's red card and numerous bookings (he's out of the next two), Holman's injury, Hall missing longish-term, Dayton only being able to play one game then missing the next two, play one, miss two - not a help to consistency.
Only Pell and Waters have shown anything like the consistent form they did last season, and it's no coincidence that these two have played practically every game they have been available for.
But others have been chopped and changed (or had to be with knocks or bans) and some, I'm afraid, have looked light years away from last season's performances.
Whether some have had a fair crack of the whip or been played in their best positions is open to debate. I know many fans have sympathy for Barthram, and I for one think our top scorer Waters is wasted on the right wing and if Morgan-Smith is going to play, play him through the middle, not wide left as we saw on Monday.
Unfortunately, some fans have turned on a few of the players they were chairing off the pitch as 'heroes'and 'legends' a matter of months ago, and also singing songs in the club bar with - a massive shame, but I'm afraid that is the way things seem to be these days.
We have been told by many to forget last season's title win and concentrate on the here and now. OK. The here and now is four wins in 23 games. So there is a dilemma.
Gary and his brother Pete have formulated the January transfer window plans with the board, so I see it as inconceivable that a change is being mooted in the short-term at least (although the talk of a two-year contract has gone quiet).
If, by the end of February, when we have played our nearest rivals and the window is closed, things haven't improved, what then?
Do you stick or twist? Stick with the manager who the players know, who has signed them all and should know them inside or out, or twist and bring someone in blind, with no power to change anything (bar free agents) if he comes in and doesn't fancy the group he has got to work with?
We went down the twist road very frequently in 2014-15 and it didn't work. My gut feeling as it stands now is that we won't do that again.
The window - 'we need experience'
So January is here and the rumour mill (or the mole in the camp...) is being racheted up to full speed.
We've had two loanees arrive already replacing two of the five who have left, and if Dickie is allowed to stay we will have four (assuming the Scott Brown return happens).
Only five can be played at one time, so we await one more - and the manager has told us he hopes for three more arrivals at least before Accrington on the 12th (or maybe Leicester on the 10th).
Some of them will see us take over their contracts from other clubs - ie they probably expire in the summer, or maybe the one after that.
The main cry from fans has been for league experience - especially after neither of the two latest loan signings has very much.
I get that. But go back to 2014-15 (sorry, I know it's painful) and look at the experience we had then. Pablo Mills. Matt Sparrow. Danny Haynes. Kane Ferdinand. Mathieu Manset. All experienced at League Two level and above. All transferred at one time or another for massive fees. All utterly useless.
If anything, the arrivals who actually did anything decent were by and large the younger ones - Jack Dunn, Wes Burns - so experience is not the be all and end all.
Yes it can help, and no we don't have much actual League Two experience at the moment - the back five on Monday of Dickie, Onariase, O'Shaughnessy and Cranston, with Griffiths behind it for instance.
I feel we must guard against bringing in experience just for the sake of it. I am sure Gary will have learned from seeing what the 1,000-game-plus quintet - I am sure he'll never forget Ferdinand's 27 minutes at Northampton.
We need a mix. Experience yes, journeymen picked up because no-one else wants them, no.
Some young, energetic legs combined with some nous, but above all more mobility, and more pace all around the team.
Onariase and de Girolamo will, I feel, help to provide that as they settle in. Onariase looked more promising as the game wore on, while de Girolamo looked much happier once Wright was on the pitch.
I'd like to see a big, mobile forward come in, the ilk of Akinde and Ikpeazu, who have impressed me more than any other forward this year. I know... there are 50-odd other clubs looking for that sort of player.
We need some natural width. If you are playing 4-4-2, you can't have Waters and Morgan-Smith as your wide men - they are not wingers and they looked lost on Monday. It was two players wasted (no fault of theirs).
I also feel we need an enforcer in midfield. Someone happy to sit and break things up allowing Pell and others to go foraging for the ball (while hopefully avoiding yellow cards...). This is where I feel Hall has been a miss in the squad. He has good experience at League level and can play that role happily.
Also we need people who can cross a ball. Friday and Monday were so frustrating when Cranston and Dickie especially got into great positions and crosses hit the first man.
Holman, Wright and co are not going to get into goalscoring positions if the ball is not coming anywhere near them, and we don't seem to be able to score 'easy' goals. If they can take good set-pieces all the better. Ours have been abject of late.
It's a big shopping list, maybe bigger than we are going to end up with, but let's hope the Johnson boys can spot the special offers before anyone else does and get them in the basket.
