Do-or-die December … Rotherham United boss Steve Evans writes for the Advertiser

We have to step up in the month of December if we are to maintain our ambition of finishing in the top six in League One this season.

No-one is hurting more than I am over our start to the campaign. Stick with us, I’m confident we’ll turn it around. But we need our supporters stood shoulder to shoulder with us. Only with unity can we conquer.

There's still plenty of time for us to come good. It's proven difficult to win points so far but we'll find a way.

I took last Saturday's defeat at Crawley Town very hard. Then my staff showed me the results from the rest of the division and, fortunately, no teams are running away with things so that top six isn’t far away.

If you put a little run together you can climb the table very quickly.

You can imagine how disappointed we were at Broadfield Stadium. That's why I was so late coming out to speak to the media. Strong words were said in the dressing room.

Our fitness coach, Joe Skarz, who was a player under me during two successive promotions in my first spell in charge here, addressed the group.

He spoke about the spirit, the bond, the desire of the team that went straight from League Two to the Championship a decade ago.

What we need now is togetherness and our fans helping us.

A few big clubs in our division believe they are having a good season yet they sit only two or three points above us while we know we have been a long way short.

We have to take the pain from the loss in West Sussex and use it as motivation at Roundwood. The spark has to come from working hard on the training ground.

You will have heard this before, but having all of our big players available for selection would be a huge help as well. The absence of so many of them has been the biggest factor in where we find ourselves this term.

As I mentioned last week, even Manchester City are finding it tough to have top men missing. A fact, not an excuse, Pep has said.

I won't defend the performance at Crawley, but we had good chances – great chances, in fact – to win that game.

Conditions made it farcical for both sides but we had the clearest sights of goal. We had two big openings in the first half: Jonson Clarke-Harris should do better with a header and Esapa should do better when he's through on the left side of the box.

Then the opportunity at the end that young Ciaran McGuckin didn't take ... it's the biggest chance of the season.

Just as we got Jonno and Esapa out of the treatment room, we were hit by illness. Players were going down with flu-like and Covid-like symptoms from Wednesday onwards last week.

It was so difficult to manage as we were getting to the point where we were in danger of having to request that the match be postponed.

Some of the lads missed out completely and some managed to make the squad even though they'd been under the weather.

We believe in our players and I believe in our staff, plus we get incredible support from above. With a full group, we will win games.

Of one thing you can be sure: we will be much stronger in the second half of the season. My teams have always shown that.

In my first full year here, in 2012/13, we were about 13th in League Two in Janaury and a supporter threw his season card at me when we lost to Bristol Rovers.

That same supporter was cuddling me on the day we got promoted on the last day.

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I'VE always said that there is virtually nothing to choose between our two goalkeepers.

Dillon Phillips got the nod for league games at the start of the season, Cameron Dawson came in for a good while and then Dillon was back in for the Crawley match.

We freshened it up because we'd been conceding a few goals.

We’d put Dillon in against Bradford City in the Vertu Trophy and a clean sheet and two outstanding reflex saves were an excellent way for him to stake his claim for the league jersey.

Cam hasn't let anyone down and it remains a close battle between the pair.

I thought Dillon was good against Crawley apart from one or two sloppy passes out. But if you're going to ask your keeper to be brave and pass it out, you're going to have one or two of those.

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I WAS standing on the touchline at Roundwood overseeing a practice match and what I was watching was stunning.

We're making some tactical tweaks which involve being braver in possession and we used the international break to go through a number of video highlights of when we get into good areas.

We've broken it down to the basics of ‘pass and move’ while keeping the identity of what we're about, which is being strong and physical.

In a Saturday game at our training ground, it all came together. I was demanding that we be brave, that we tried the pass, that we kept possession, and the players really took it on board.

We showed further signs of it in our win at Bradford City where I talked to the media afterwards about us being braver.

Being brave isn't about sticking an elbow in the face of an opponent or going through him at knee-height, being brave is about being prepared to take the ball in tight areas.

Against Bradford, I saw Jack Holmes do it in the centre of the pitch, dropping the shoulder and coming out on the other side. It looked terrific. Shaun McWilliams did it many times.

I'll accept someone misplacing a pass if they're trying to play it with the right intentions. As long as they have a desire to work back, they'll have my support every day of the week.

Some players have come here having played at clubs with no pressure. They've been sitting in mid-table or in the bottom half of League One and they've been happy with that.

When you play for this club in this division, there's pressure, and that's when bravery is required.

Remember those previous promotions I mentioned? Players like Kari Arnason, Craig Morgan, Joe Skarz, Alex Revell, Lee Frecklington and Richie Smallwood had different qualities, but they all shared one characteristic ...

Courage.

Also, in those difficult first few months, the club had the unity I referenced earlier. We need that again.

Like I said, it’s now or never.