I’ve just got back from the Walsall game and I know the forum will be full of “Mellon out” posts tonight, so I wanted to offer a slightly different angle — not blindly defending him, but trying to look at what actually happened.

Mellon’s strategy was pretty clear: match Walsall’s sheer physicality (which is exactly why they’re top of the table) by putting out our biggest, strongest side, then try to grind them down for 70 minutes. It was always going to be a war of attrition rather than a footballing spectacle. The idea was to contain them, keep them at arm’s length, and then bring on the quicker, more agile players late on to try and nick something when everyone was tired.

And to be fair, without Hannant’s mistake, the first part of that plan worked. Walsall never really threatened us. But we were never going to score playing that way, and the football was dire. Once we went behind, there was no real Plan B — that’s the downside of picking a team purely to wrestle with Walsall for an hour.

The late changes were obviously an attempt to salvage a point, but we just aren’t good enough in the final third right now, and we really miss Conlon for any kind of control or creativity.

I get why people are angry. It’s hard to see where goals or wins are coming from with this squad. Crawley on Saturday is already feeling like a must-win, because the run after that — Tranmere, Grimsby, Walsall (again), Chesterfield, Bromley, Notts County — could be brutal. By mid-January we could easily be looking nervously over our shoulders.

But sacking Mellon right now, after tonight’s performance and with the squad as it is, won’t magically solve those problems. Tonight wasn’t good, but it also wasn’t a tactical meltdown — it was a manager trying to find a way to compete with a team that’s physically stronger in every area. It didn’t come off, and the football is painful to watch, but it’s not the full-on disaster some will paint it as.

We’re all frustrated. Just maybe worth taking a breath before we reach for the knives.