Darlings, what can I do with such material, what CAN I honestly DO? Give me paint and I will paint, give me prose and I will enpurple it, give me dross and I will sit here sulkily wondering what I can possibly tell you about such a rotten performance and a ghastly match. And unlike the numbingly dull recent draws at Bournemouth and Wrecsam yesterday at Gigg Lane did not even offer up the functional reward of a point in recompense for an outing shorn of ambition and devoid of on-pitch passion. Nor was a point in any way deserved. We were awful, we were fragmented, we were lacking in pace, in vision and in determination too. It was no way to celebrate the respect paid to Anthony Buckeridge by Her Majesty.

So, another game, another formation and another set of players. Mr Taylor offered us a thoroughly odd hotch-potch:

Musselwhite
Joseph Whittle Anderson Holt
Regan Ashbee Delaney Melton
Green Elliott

We played in this formation, as a 4-4-2, but in truth I make that a keeper, five players who are basically defenders and five more who are midfielders. No attackers. At 5 to 3 it was perfectly predictable that Elliott and Green, our most skilful ballplayers, would be starved up front by the absence of Elliott and Green behind them providing decent service from midfield. So it proved. At 5 to 3 it was a pretty good guess that the left side of our midfield would be a disaster area. Messrs Delaney and Melton saw to it that that estimate was bang on target too. And what price would you have got on Justin being hauled off at some stage to make way for a re-shuffle? A short one, but you should've taken it anyway, because that too duly occurred. Predictably enough. Perhaps Mr Taylor doesn't do predictions. He just keeps spinning that wheel of fortune and trying something new game in, game out.

Off we went, on a pitch that was sanded but showed little sign of the deluge that has lately swept the country but, it seems, spared Lancashire. And nothing happened for, ooo, a good 25 minutes of woefully dull football. This is not one of my "cracking pace maintained in the pub from early doors until kick-off and the world is a little bit hazy until about half three" subterfuges. No. In fact I have a nasty sore throat and ale was taken in limited quantities, and purely for medicinal soothing qualities. In fact nothing happened for the first 25 minutes. Well, OK, Bury tried to slip a through ball behind Holt from time to time, and both Whittle and Anderson contributed well-judged challenges to terminate brief moments of anxiety. But by about twenty past 3 the ground was eerily silent. You could have been walking up and down Manchester Old Road in Bury and not suspected a football match was taking place in the vicinity.

Bury finally began to exert some pressure. A dangerous cross to the back post was admirably dealt with by Holt. Then a through ball down their right allowed a cross from the by-line on to the toe of a home boy near the penalty spot; his shot spun away wastefully wide. Then Bury attacked down the other flank and a vicious low cross was deflected just over our bar by one of theirs arriving at speed at the near post.

We were getting little from a fussy referee and an inattentive linesman, and Holt was particularly and understandably aggrieved when he was hauled up for shirt-pulling after being very plainly the victim of the crime not the perpetrator. But our inadequacies were chiefly self-made and not the fault of the officials. Green was flagged offside three times in quick succession. He was a fish out of water as a striker and must have been wondering why he wasn't occupying his natural spot in midfield, leaving the attacking berth to be filled by - radical thought - an attacker. We were feeble up front and all that was being supplied from midfield was occasional over-hit hopeful hoofs. In fact the only moment of alarm up at the end defended by Garner in the Bury goal arrived when one of his own defenders sliced the ball dangerously up in the air inside the box. Garner rescued the situation with a flailing punch.

Bury looked competent enough, with Newby down the right and Chris Billy in the centre playing fine hands for their side. And our complaints about the match officials should have been terminated for good on 45 when Justin was exposed, then outpaced, and as he raced to recover he pulled his man down just inside the box. Justin, arch professional, did all he could to make the incident look lawful by ensuring he too tumbled gracelessly to the turf in combination with his adversary, whereupon he looked up, all injured innocence, like the householders currently occupying the nation's airwaves with their tales of woe about water-damaged houses which they chose to buy despite location location location being floodplain floodplain floodplain. But an award of a penalty and a red card would have caused little ground for tiger complaint. The ref looked questioningly at his linesman, who studiously avoided the inquiring gaze, and the game was allowed to continue into first-half added-time. There was still opportunity for Bury to force a mad melee in our goalmouth before the whistle went, but we gasped frantically across the threshold to half-time scoreless parity.

And we began the second half in much better style. Suddenly we began to move the ball down both flanks with more zeal and pace. Melton and Delaney had swapped positions in midfield, pushing Delaney out wide, though this was not the cause of the improvement: both, Taylor purchases the pair, were dreadful - Melton wholly ineffective and Delaney frequently looking terrified when on the ball. Rangy once, now ungainly. But the removal of Justin Whittle, who limped off five minutes into the half, in favour of Dudfield did allow a helpful positional adjustment. Joseph to centre-back, Regan to right-back and Stuart Green, glory be, back into his appropriate midfield role. And now it was better. A Delaney shot was charged down. Green buzzed. Elliott cleverly won a corner, and was full of astute touches.

But it didn't last. Bury surged back up the other end and a back-post cross was headed hard down into the ground and the ball bounced up and over the Muss's bar. Our brief spell of ascendancy was at an end and the game settled back into a rut. O it was bad. And then it got worse. Bury scored. And what a squalid, charmless goal it was. A free kick on their left, 40 yards from our goal, was hoisted high and hopeful into our box where a big Bury bruiser climbed to flick a header into our net. It must be tedious for footballers to practise dead balls in training, but in turgid collisions such as yesterday's game they are all too often the difference between the sides. Bury's routine was bereft of finesse, but we defended slackly, and lost the game as a result.

Elliott had run himself into the ground and, as at Bournemouth, could be absolved of any blame for the team's incoherent display. He had come off for Alexander, so, at last, the Alexander/ Dudfield partnership was re-united. But to negligible effect. A Joseph cross was palmed away by Garner. Green ran in from the left, but saw his shot blocked at close range by a defender. Alexander tricked the referee into awarding us a free-kick outside the box but Green's chip was deal with confidently by Garner. We had our moments. But there was no fluency and little conviction about our play.

Bury came closer to scoring again than we did to levelling. The Muss produced three fine saves as the clock ticked down, first low to his left, then above his shoulder, and then finally, and most impressive of all, a smother at the feet of the striker after our defence had been sliced open with ghastly ease. That was on 91, and the game ended soon after. In defeat.

The Muss had a perfectly good game. The defence performed largely adequately, but was undone by the crude set-piece Bury goal. But in midfield Regan and Ashbee were modestly competent at best, while Delaney and Melton were simply dreadful, and you can't make progress in this Division on the basis of such an unstable midfield. Delaney looks to lack confidence and is unsure of his role, but even so he is Pele next to Melton, who doesn't tackle, doesn't read the play, doesn't track back, doesn't carry a threat going forward, but, since he doesn't get his shirt dirty, is handy at saving money on laundry bills. Our Man of the Match was therefore Dean Keates, whose absence helped us to appreciate more sharply the value of his committed, hard-working contributions. Elliott was tireless, but Green spent most the first half looking lost and though he unfurled ten minutes of genius to begin the second half, by the later stages he was as ragged and uninspired as the rest of our side. Alexander and Dudfield offered little once they came on as subs and the overall impression was of a group of players who don't know what their manager expects of them.

And that is the holiday period squandered. A run of five games beginning with the closure of the Ark has yielded just five points. We have no momentum, and now we have no opportunity to build any because that is midweek fixtures done and dusted until March. What we do have is a run of easy home games. A settled side, please.