Exclusive John Welsh PNE column

But sometimes you’ve got to look at the bigger picture.

As a squad and as a football club we all want the same thing, we want promotion and it’s going to be fairly unlikely that everyone’s going to play every single game all season.

You’ll get one or two but there won’t be many.

It is frustrating at times but when you’re selected you’ve got to play your part.

With the bigger group we’ve got this season I’ve always felt that anyone can come in and do a job.

You build a great relationship within the squad and it all builds competitive spirit but in a good way.

Obviously we all want to do well as individuals and that leads to the team doing well.

Everyone pushes and supports each other and wishes each other the best – it’s a great environment to be in.

Every time the manager has spoken to me he’s explained the reasons behind his decisions and I’ve always felt that I’ve been part of things.

We all want the same thing, we all want success in the game and there’s no point in being too disappointed when you’re not involved, you’ve just got to get on with it and hope the lads win the game.

Within three or four games it could be me in that position and I could be playing and someone else isn’t.

We’ve proved we’ve got plenty of strings to our bow. We’ve got a squad built for every type of match.

There are a lot of players in the squad who bring different things.

You can put different people in to do different jobs and they’ll do it no problem.

The gaffer uses the squad as he sees fit and people in the squad are better at doing certain things than others and we can accommodate pretty much any game-plan that the gaffer wants to use.

There’s a vast amount of talent throughout the group and in different areas.

That’s probably one of the reasons for our success, the variety of choice in players that the manager can use, which is ideal for him.

At Brentford on Saturday I played in the Championship for the first time since November.

It was nice to get some minutes.

Ideally it would have been 11 v 11 but we went a man down not long after I came on.

But because I enjoy tackling and I enjoy the physical side of the game we had to do that a bit more, which suited me a bit.

It was nice to get out there and win a few tackles and headers.

We’ve always had a squad that will dig in, help each other and fight for things.

That endeavour, spirit, work-rate and sheer willingness not to concede a goal or to win a game or to win point was evident in the game on Saturday.

Going to down to 10 men doesn’t help, especially against an expansive team like Brentford who want to get the ball down and pass it and get men forward.

It was a difficult end to the game but I think the lads dug in well.

We had to give away possession because of the lack of numbers but we got behind the ball, scrapped for everything and deserved the point in the end.

It keeps us in the mix but we’re not getting too excited.

With the group that we’ve got, a young, hungry one, 
it’s always good to see the goal rather than actually 
having it.

Everyone knows that’s what we’re going for but so is everyone else.

We’re quietly on the outskirts looking up and we’ll just see where we are in 10 or so games and then going into the last few is when it really matters.

For now we’ve got to concentrate on Wolves and they’ve been the team to beat every single week.

Everyone knows how much money they’ve spent but in this league it’s not just about that, you’ve got to put together a squad and they seem to be getting it right at the moment.

It’s going to be tough but I’d put us up against anyone in the league on our day.

We’ve got some really talented players here who all mix into a great group.

At the moment Wolves are the standout team and it will be good to test ourselves against them and see what level we’re at.

If we can get a good result it will really kick us on for the rest of the season.

With Aston Villa to come after that it’s going to be a really interesting week.

A lot of teams are playing each other in the top six but we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves, take each game as it comes and pick up as many points as we can.