Tuesday’s news that Steve Davis had parted company from the club came as little surprise to me.

As Nigel Travis stated, football is a results business, and to be on a run of 11 league games without a win was simply not good enough.

In Davis’s defence, he did have some bad luck, particularly with the run of injuries in the squad, losing experienced players in Charlie Lee, George Elokobi and Josh Coulson to long - term injuries.

Losing players with their level of experience and leadership would be a crippling blow for any team, but it was important for the squad to adapt and that clearly hasn’t happened. It’s clear that the defensive frailties have been the key reason for the run of poor results we find ourselves on.

There have been occasions in this barren run where I felt we may have turned a corner, in particular the battling 2-2 draws away at Aldershot and Wrexham, but the upturn in fortunes never materialised.

There have been too many insipid displays since this bad run of form began at the start of September and most concerning has been the way the defence has been struggling to cut out the simple mistakes that keep occurring.

Our inability to keep clean sheets, coupled with our struggles at breaking stubborn defences down, has meant we often find ourselves fighting a losing battle.

While a change of manager was needed, the senior players in the squad need to step up to the mark. Whilst there are a number of notable absentees from the squad, there is still enough experience remaining in the squad.

Complacency seems to have grown throughout the side over the last couple of months. Whether that is due to a lack of competition for places I’m not sure, but it needs to be addressed.

I would like to see some of the younger players, and in particular Sam Dalby, Josh Koroma and Henry Ochieng, feature more in the first team.

They each offer something different to what has featured recently and I feel one of Davis’s biggest mistakes was not making use of their talents more. With a new direction on the coaching side, hopefully we’ll see an upturn in fortunes soon.

It was a brave decision made by the directors to end Davis’s reign so early, particularly after the high turnover in management over the last few years, but it was also important for the directors to recognise that things simply weren’t working on the pitch.

Whilst the board have tried to give Davis as much time as possible to turn things around, they have acted in a timely fashion.

With the majority of the season still ahead of us, it gives us an opportunity to start afresh and try and kick on going into the 2nd half of the season. It will also give the new incumbent an opportunity to review the squad he currently has at his disposal before entering the January transfer window.