Fighting back his disappointment, Macc Town manager Gary Simpson has paid tribute to the efforts of his players during an exhausting – and demoralising – holiday period.
The Silkmen gathered just a single point from the three games that did go ahead, but their boss was delighted with the never-say-die attitude and work ethic of his men.
"I can’t ask any more of the lads," he said after Monday’s home defeat to Rotherham United. "They’ve given me everything they’ve got again today, and we haven’t got our just desserts, but we’ve got to keep going and keep battling and hopefully our luck will turn.
"When the tide does turn, somebody’s in for a right good hiding because we’re creating chances, we just need to take a fair percentage and we can be out of sight in games.
"I’m going to give the lads a couple of days off because they’ve had three games in seven days and to be honest we’ll let them rest and recharge the batteries.
"We’ve been in every day apart from Christmas Day so I’m going to give them some time off and then we’ll go again."
Far from lambasting his men, Simmo was rueing the three outings, insisting that they should have gathered a maximum nine points.
"We outplayed Oxford and we were unlucky," he added. "We were 2-0 up at Bury when it could have been three or four and we’d have been out of sight.
"And today we played a team one point off the top of the division and if you’d come and seen the game you’d have thought we were the team at the top of the division."
However, Macc are in danger of allowing all their good work before the turn of the year to go to waste, having dropped to 16th in League Two.
And while they are still well on course to reach Simpson’s 50-point target, merely avoiding relegation would be seen by many as a bare minimum for a campaign in which Macc have punched well above their weight.
"It seems as though it’s mirroring the start of the season when we were doing well but not picking any points up," he continued. "We’ve always said we’re a decent team but I suppose what costs the money is somebody who puts the ball in the back of the net and we haven’t got the finance to get somebody to do that.
"What we do is try to get the best out of what we’ve got and these lads are working their socks off. Hopefully the tide will turn."
