AT 2pm on Saturday I stepped out of the house, got into my car and discovered the battery was flat. I was going nowhere.

Fortunately one of our neighbours came to my rescue and gave me a lift to Blackwell Meadows. We’re not speaking anymore and he’ll be lucky to get a Christmas card.

Before the lift was acquired, a very brief thought crossed my mind – if I can’t get down to the ground, I could stay in and watch the Ryder Cup. It was just a flashing thought and I would almost never have considered it, but I had a sneaky feeling of what was in store for the afternoon.

If that thought passed my mind, someone who almost religiously attends almost every game of the season, it makes you wonder what must cross the mind of someone who is less wed to the idea of attending. Someone who decides on the day that they’ll pop down to watch a game. Someone who pays £14 to get through the turnstile. The kind of person the club are desperate to convert in to regular attendees, maybe even to become a season ticket holder. One thing that is certain is whether you’re a diehard fan or a casual punter, the football on display is simply not good enough.

Stockport were a typical Jim Gannon side. They were functional, fit and strong. They’re never going to get high scores for style but to a man they knew what they had to do and they executed it. We would kill for that right now. In comparison, we are a side that doesn’t appear to have any idea how we’re meant to play. Inevitably, that led to balls being played longer and longer against a side so big across the board that they wouldn’t have looked out of place if they’d turned up at Blackwell Meadows to play with an oval ball instead.

Like a few other games this season we made it so easy for our opponents to snuff out whatever threat we had. It could have been so different. We were presented with a golden opportunity to take the lead with Reece Styche through one on one with the visiting goalkeeper and yet, whether it was self indulgence or just a bad decision, the ball ended up being tamely chipped in to the goalkeeper’s hands. Salford Mk II!

At this point you might have figured that I am still pretty down in the dumps with Saturday’s showing. Throughout it felt like there was no change in our gift to improve the performance. If it was isolated to one game I would probably overlook it, but it’s starting to look like our season might be in the hands of others as it becomes more apparent there is little the management team or the players can do about our worrying slide down the table.

The optimistic among us might cling on to the three or four decent performances we’ve put in, but they are just sporadic glimpses of what could be. The mess we find ourselves in right now can’t be rectified by one decent performance every three or four games.

Our next game is at FC United of Manchester. They look to be the worst team in the division. Due to our FA Cup exit last week, it means we have nearly two weeks to prepare. With patience wearing thin on the terraces, if we turn up and put in yet another disjointed, shambolic performance, then as a club we’re going to have to start thinking about whether we can tolerate it for much longer.