With our recent form, we’ve been due to really take a team apart and in the first half, that’s exactly what we did against Halifax. It was a first half full of verve and vigour with four goals to match.

At 4-1 and game over, it’s perhaps understandable that we took our foot off the pedal. But it was very much a case of job done to get our name into the draw, which produced a lovely tie on Merseyside to visit our old foe Tranmere, with Micky Mellon and a number of staff and players going back to their former club. One to look forward to without a doubt!

This week, though, I want to focus on two players in particular - Josh Lundstram and Mike Fondop. Lundstram signed for us at the start of last season with huge fanfare from Altrincham having been named as one of the league’s best midfielders.

It just didn’t work for him for a long time though and he was in and out of the side. However, for the last month, he has really come into his own and is now a key cog in the engine room as part of a midfield which is now taking games by the scruff of the neck.

I have no doubt there’s even more to come from him, and I hope his tight hamstring doesn’t hamper that progress, but Lundstram deserves great praise for the way he has stuck to his task and deservedly made a starting berth his own through endeavour, goals and no lack of skill.

Mellon and his staff also gain huge credit for giving him the ability to find the player he can be and another player they have had that impact on is Mike Fondop.

“God’s Number 9” is very much a cult hero with many of the Latics faithful and he has been a key figure this season, with two more goals last weekend too.

Whilst he may not have had the career of forward colleagues James Norwood and Joe Garner, he has really stepped up to be a figurehead for the side on more than one occasion during their time trying to attain full fitness.

He doesn’t allow us to have the same nuanced approach going forward as Norwood and Garner but his grit and determination alongside his work-rate give us something of a foundation on which to build and, whilst he could be more clinical, he has managed to find goals to add to that too.

Whatever happens for the rest of the season when those two are fully fit, and with the pacy Kane Drummond offering us something entirely different up top now too, Fondop has made his mark on a season which continues to look very promising.