HAPPY New Year everyone! It promises to be a very good 2015 for Newport County AFC but we won’t be taking anything for granted.

We’re in a fantastic position after our two wins over the Christmas period and we all believe we can go on to claim at least a play-off place come the end of the season.

But we also know what happened at this time last year and if you’re over-confident these things can come back and bite you on the backside.

There will be no complacency and anyone who saw the lads in training this week will know that we are 100 per cent focused and ready for another tough game against Carlisle this afternoon.

We are boosted by the return of Joe Day after he completed his move from Peterborough and we also have Aaron O’Connor back from suspension today.

The fact that the club has paid a record fee for Joe shows that we mean business but I think it will turn out to be a shrewd bit of business by the gaffer.

Joe is a top goalkeeper and he could be worth 15 to 20 points a season.

I’m sure he can play at a very high level and if he carries on the way he played for us earlier in the season then we could be getting a very big fee for him down the line.

With Jamie Stephens as well we have two good keepers and I’m sure Jamie will learn a lot from Joe.

It looks like Lenny Pidgeley will be leaving the club this month along with Danny Crow and Christian Jolley and it will be sad to see all of them go.

They have played a big part in the success of this club over the last few years and they are all great blokes but it’s not good for them or the club if they are not getting games.

I hope they get fixed up quickly because they all need to be playing regularly and it doesn’t look like that will happen here.

Crowy and Jolls are not going to get in ahead of Azza or Zeb, who got two goals last week, and Shaun Jeffers and Rene Howe are also ahead of them.

There is great competition all over the field and not everyone can play.

We have six fit central midfielders right now so it’s a fight for me to be involved but I was buzzing to get some minutes over Christmas.

I’m feeling really good at the moment and I’m as fit as I have been for years thanks to extra training sessions with my old mate Junior Borg at St Joseph’s boxing gym.

I’ve been taking some of the youth team down there to toughen them up as well and that should do them good once they return from their Christmas break next week.

The under-18s are at home to Torquay on Tuesday morning and we’ll see how well they’ve looked after themselves over the last two weeks.

Finally I wanted to pay tribute to one of my sporting heroes after the news that Steven Gerrard is leaving my team Liverpool at the end of the season.

He has dragged that team through the past decade and I’m gutted that he’s leaving.

He hasn’t won the league but he’s won everything else and given us Liverpool fans so many great memories.

Hopefully he comes back in a few years and wins the Premier League as a manager. And if he needs an assistant he can contact me through the Argus!