Good afternoon and welcome to the Coral Windows Stadium for today's match against Cheltenham Town. The fixture computer traditionally arranges for a reasonably local encounter for these festive occasions, so I can sympathise with Cheltenham who have had to make an unusually long trip for today's game. We extend our usual warm welcome to the players, supporters and officials from Cheltenham who have made it here this afternoon.

It has fallen to me to write the first programme notes of the New Year so I would like to take this opportunity to say I hope you had a good Christmas and wish you all the best for a happy, prosperous and successful 2010.

In my last programme notes for the Rotherham United game, I suggested that come the end of the festive period we would have a better idea of our standing in the league having played against some of the sides strongly fancied for promotion.

Due to printing deadlines, I am writing these notes ahead of the date of the Aldershot game so it is still too early to be able to draw any conclusions. Hopefully, however, we will have gone on to pick up some more points over the festive season that will stand us in good stead to kick on during January. Let's all remember that the business part of the season really takes place from around March so it's important that we are at least in touch with the play-off places by that stage in order for us to benefit from a strong end to the campaign.

At the time of writing, Stuart is aware that there is a little bit of money available for him to look to strengthen the side during the January transfer window. However, he has not yet come to us with any particular targets so it remains to be seen what there may be in terms of comings and goings over this period.

To matters off the pitch, and, as Julian mentioned in the programme notes for the last home game, we have been delighted by the great response to our Christmas season ticket offer. We are currently about 50% up on sales compared with 12 months ago and I would like to thank all the supporters who have shown their commitment by renewing their tickets at this stage. This deal obviously offers tremendous value for money and we are pleased that it has once again proved popular with fans.

The start of a new year always brings renewed optimism and a chance for a fresh start. Here's hoping we can kick off 2010 in winning style.

Enjoy the game

Mark Lawn