Tuesday was fun! A fluent, attacking performance which, not for the first time this season, could have resulted in a lot more goals.

Interestingly, we achieved it after reshuffling the pack again. Parkinson has followed a consistent pattern of rotation this season, to the point that it’s almost felt like we have a Saturday team and a Tuesday team!

Admittedly, having a Carabao Cup match hot on the heels of a disappointing opener meant we were bound to make changes from the MK Dons match, but there seems to be a pattern emerging.

Andy Cannon, Tom O’Connor and Ryan Barnett have only started afternoon kick-offs, and the same was true of Jacob Mendy and Elliot Lee before Tuesday. Meanwhile, Jake Bickerstaff, Luke Young and Anthony Forde have only been in the first eleven for floodlit games.

Putting vampire conspiracy theories to one side (for the moment), we’re certainly using our squad depth more, which makes sense when you think of the amount of quality players we have at our disposal.

I suspect this was what Parkinson hoped to do last season, but a limp performance at Chesterfield forced a rethink.

We won the opening game at home to Eastleigh, and then earned a draw in boiling conditions at Yeovil. Three days later we travelled to Derbyshire hoping to land a blow on a fellow promotion favourite.

Perhaps the exhausting conditions played a part in the decision to rotate out four players, but it looked to be more of a continuation of a policy. We’d made four changes for the Yeovil game, after all.

The alterations at Chesterfield felt more fundamental, though. Luke Young had been pivotal in the first two games, but he made way for Tom O’Connor, and the midfield was reshuffled further with James Jones replacing Jordan Davies.

 It didn’t work. Chesterfield held a high line and at first our attempts to play early balls over the top looked like they would bear fruit.

However, as the first half wore on we found it progressively more difficult to get those passes right, and Chesterfield took control. By half way through the half we were 2-0 down, and that was the final score: there never really looked like there was a way back into the game.

We switched back to a more familiar line-up the following Saturday and won 5-0 against Maidstone United.

From that point onwards the rotation stopped, apart from some light touches here and there. We didn’t make more than 2 changes to our starting line-up in any of the next 26 league games.

I suspect we’d have stuck with rotation if there hadn’t been such a rude awakening at Chesterfield, and I think we’re looking to reintroduce the same approach this season.

I’m not suggesting we’ll stick to the policy for the whole campaign. It makes sense to ease the strain of constant two-fixture weeks by rotating early in the season, and then settling on a more consistent starting eleven in the second half of the campaign. They’d be able to push for the promotion in the run-in without having too many miles in their legs from a gruelling start to the season.

Obviously, plans can change. Thankfully, last season showed that we have the quality to adjust to circumstances and still succeed.