Steve Davis says our turnaround has to start with a positive Christmas period

.Steve Davis has admitted that he has had a heart-to-heart chat with his squad to assess what will be expected and needed in the second half of the season. The Alex boss wants his players to get out and way from the bottom four as soon as possible and the ‘mini-break’ from matches has helped the unity of the group. Steve knows that the results will have to improve in the second half of the season if we are to avoid a relegation scrap at the bottom of League One

With the team back to be playing away at Northampton this weekend to face homeless Coventry, Steve said on the break: “It has been a really good working break and the players have worked hard and have been focussed on the job at hand.

“We had a practice game yesterday and tried to put things we have been working on into practice in a mini-game as such. I hope we will see the benefit of the work. It was sharp and we have had some good sessions.

“We held a chat with the squad and had a bit of a heart-to-heart together. It was just a general chat of where we are and where we need to be to turn our season around.

“We know we have got to be better during the second half of the season and we cannot just keep thinking that we have enough games to get out of trouble. We do have a lot of points to play, we are not quite at half way yet but we have got to get ourselves out of the situation.

He added: “We have to start doing it now and make sure we get the results we will need to turn our season around. We have something to build on from the Crawley result and that is the message we were putting over to the players.”