I'VE been putting in lots of extra work over the last month and hopefully I will reap the rewards.

October started with me suffering a recurrence of a calf injury in the goalless draw at Preston.

I've picked up a few niggling injuries this season and I was annoyed more than anything.

The knee injury at Middlesbrough was just a freak but to have the same calf injury again - but only worse - made it tough to take.

It was a good time to get home to Northern Ireland for a few days during the international break.

Ever since then I've been in more or less every day.

It was a tear to my left calf and it was swollen and bruised for about two weeks.

I think I pushed myself too hard trying to get fit for the Northern Ireland game against Slovenia.

I probably didn't give myself enough time to recover and I paid the price by missing three games.

The calf is getting there now.

I'm doing work before and after training in terms of physio and massage.

It just means coming in half-an-hour earlier in the mornings to make sure I'm right to go out and train.

It seems to be helping at the moment and hopefully it will get me through all the games we've got coming up.

Hopefully it's behind me now.

It was good to get 25 minutes under my belt against Watford and it was nice to be involved again.

I'll be looking to build my match fitness when I'm away with Northern Ireland next week.

As well as smashing five goals against the Hornets it was nice to keep a clean-sheet and put an end to our run of conceding first in the previous five home games, with several of those coming early in games.

I think if you see the nature of the goals we conceded at home early they are all different.

It's probably to do with not being switched on from the very start, whether it be a lapse of concentration at the back or not picking up a runner from midfield.

Sometimes when teams come to our place and get an early goal it might be the worse thing they can do because they'll be thinking a 1-0 result at West Brom is good.

They then have around 85 minutes to defend that, whereas Crystal Palace and Swansea dug in for 60 minutes and then got a goal.

That makes life difficult for us because they then stick ten men behind the ball and we don't have as much time to break them down.

Reading scored early and we won 3-1.

If you take the first five minutes out of that game I think we dominated and they were lucky to only concede three.

Youssouf scored another cracker against the Royals - his third of the season.

We'd been joking with Youssouf that he'd scored his quota of goals for the season before the Reading game and he then he went and bagged another.

If you'd had to pick a midfielder before the start of the season who you thought would score three goals in the first 15 games - I don't think it would have been Youssouf.

Credit to him because I think everyone has pinned him as a defensive player but he's shown he's got that bit of quality to his game.

Last season he was lacking match sharpness after being injured but there was never any doubt he was going to be a good player for us.

This season he has got that run in the side and has been very good.

He's got competition from Gonzalo Jara now so it will be interesting to see how the competition for places unfolds.

Unfortunately we could not take the full six points from our two home games after the international break and it was disappointing to lose 1-0 to Swansea after beating Reading so convincingly.

And to rub salt into the wound Craig Beattie, or 'Mr Pasty' as we call him, came back to haunt us.

I spoke to Beatts at half-time when he was coming off and I text him the day after.

I think he was the longest odds I've seen for a striker to score first goal at 9/1.

It always seems former players score against their old teams.

But good for Beatts and I don't think we'd have scored against Swansea if we were still playing now - it was one of those nights.

It didn't damage us too much though and it seems in the weeks where we've dropped points the other teams around us have dropped points as well.

The league is very tight but we need to try and pull away if we can.

We can only look after ourselves and we just have to be positive going into every game.

There were a few ups and downs in October but the boys have been good at lifting each other's spirits through the tricky times with a few jokes.

Look-a-likes are the flavour of the month.

It's just a bit of banter and it's funny to see all the pictures stuck up in the dressing room.

It gets different reactions from the players depending on whether they've had a bad day in training or not.

Generally it's funny and there has been some great look-a-likes.

Scotty Carson kicked it off by comparing me to a llama and I then stuck one up of him alongside Shane MacGowan.

Robert Koren was likened to Willy Wonka played by Jonny Depp in the film of Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.

When Roko had long hair it was pretty similar!

As a team I think we did pretty well to put the frighteners on Watford on Halloween.

It was great to blast five goals in front of our home fans and round off the month in style.

But we must build on it now.