Arguably the stand-out performance of the season so far – proving the O’s could live with one of the division’s big hitters.

And, as lamentable as the Crawley defeat was barely a week ago, the O’s have turned the tables by picking up four vital points and a brace of sterling performances from a couple of extremely tough away fixtures.

With the squad down to the bare bones, due to the mid to long term absences of David Mooney and Shaun Batt, credit to the manager for turning out an eleven that not only won at Gillingham – somewhere we seldom win at – and more importantly, more than matching our closest rivals, albeit one place below us in the table.

Having also lost our keeper, Jamie Jones, to a long-term injury, Jake Larkins has arguably endured a baptism of fire. But in his opening two games he has done what has been asked of him and we had to thank the former Hammer for that important double save straight after the restart.

They say goals change games but Larkins’ block to deny clean through Kevin McDonald not only kept us in the game, but also served to inspire us by then enjoying the upper hand. It was a goal from the unlikely source in Mathieu Baudry that ensured we remain in an automatic promotion spot at the halfway stage of the season.

To have lost – and it seemed that way after Wolves had grabbed such an early opener – would have been a psychological blow that might have been hard to recover from.

But, the O’s dug in and showed opponents, undoubtedly with a massive budget given the fact that over 50,000 people had passed through the Molineux turnstiles over the last two games, that grit, determination and no little skill can triumph in adversity.

Even though there is still a chasing pack, it still seems to be a three-horse race between us, Wolves and now Brentford – who seem to have put the disappointment of losing to us in late September and continue on an amazing run – despite having lost their manager Uwe Rosler.

Therefore, we can now go in to a month of perfectly winnable but certainly not easy fixtures starting with a New Year’s Day clash with a Bristol City side that held us last month. We need to get some points on the board if we are to keep in touch with the rampant Bees.

Keep the faith,

Up the O’s.