Fixture congestion means Thursday and Sunday

The current snow blanket covering the country may well disrupt this weekend's fixtures. They have had it bad up north and I felt a bit guilty complaining to a colleague today about the two inches we've had overnight when he's got a foot of it outside York. Rochdale must be a major doubt.

Irrespective, our continuing cup engagements are clogging up the calendar and we face four games in nine days. Our Luton replay will now be played on Thursday 9th December to accommodate a live airing on ESPN. That means our home game against Walsall moves back to Sunday 12th. It's Brentford away on the Tuesday (14th), live on Sky, before we trek north to Hartlepool the following Saturday. Too early, of course, to be talking about defining moments but our results in these games will give as a strong indicator to the potential success of this season.

The three leagues games give us a solid opportunity to maintain our unbeaten run and to hold our place in the top two. Rochdale is the hardest of these on paper but not beyond us and there's every chance it'll be off as I've said. We simply have to beat a very poor Walsall at the Valley and whilst Hartlepool have beaten Brighton in recent weeks, we have to fancy our chances of repeating last year's victory.

The cup games offer the promise of a two-legged southern area JPT semi-final against a side below us in the league for a place at Wembley and a third round F A Cup trip to Tottenham Hotspur. Whilst I am bullish about our league games, I don't rate our cup prospects. A win in either will, frankly, be a bonus. Brentford have raised their game against the bigger sides at home this year and will relish getting at us again after already having beaten us at Griffin Park. Luton Town will have little fear of us in their replay and I believe they will want a trip to White Hart Lane more than our boys will. Perhaps beating Brentford in the JPT offers more reward than playing Spurs, although Richard Murray might disagree?