Consistency may be defined as doing the same thing at the same standard over and over again.

Therefore, a record after 12 games of the League Two season of four wins, four defeats and four draws would apparently mark AFC Wimbledon down as one of the division's most consistent teams would it not?

However, any casual Dons fan would know that in his three years in charge, Neal Ardley has struggled to actually achieve any type of consistent run of form for his various teams.

In fact I was not at all surprised to read online over the weekend that in almost 140 league games under Ardley, the highest number of points we have managed in any 10-game stretch is 17 – five wins and two draws at best.

Having watched more than four seasons of modern League two football, it is clear, even with the random highlights shown online, that there is not a lot of quality in this division and therefore the lower the number of defensive mistakes each team makes, the higher their chance of success.

Oxford United 1-0 AFC Wimbledon - not much for Ardley to shout about

Burton Albion may well be a good template for Ardley’s Wimbledon to adopt – their rise to the upper echelons (at present) of League One seem to have been built primarily on a solid, dour defence.

When the Dons managed a late equaliser at Burton late in the 2013/14 season, I noted that the home side had won 13 games 1-0 that campaign and they duly won promotion on the back of so many clean sheets.

Ardley may well claim, with some justification, that the current Dons side boasting the likes of Robinson, Reeves, Bulman and Taylor is a far cry from the disorganised rabble he took over from Terry Brown.

However it was Albert Einstein who said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is in fact insanity.

To stay sane and succeed in mounting a realistic play-off challenge this season, Ardley needs to ensure that near misses like Saturday’s late defeat at Oxford are the exception not the norm.