Dover Athletic welcome Chesterfield to Crabble with boss Andy Hessenthaler knowing that his side are agonisingly close to National League safety after a fine run of form in recent weeks which included coming agonisingly close to a win at promotion chasing Solihull Moors.

Hessenthaler told KSN, “I would have taken the point obviously before kick-off, but to concede the second goal so late is disappointing and that’s happened now three or four times since I came back to the Football Club.”

“It’s something that we’ve got to try and avoid but credit to them, they kept going even with ten men, they more or less considered that they had had nothing to lose and went long back to front and as they were one of the biggest teams that I’ve seen at this level.”

“In the end they got a little bit of luck with a couple of bounces and got a point! Yes, we were disappointed but it’s hard to be critical when the boys had played so well – they were terrific to be fair!”

“It was a frustrating afternoon as their first goal was blatantly offside, with our boys remonstrating with the assistant but he wasn’t budging.”

“But after seeing it on the video later, he’s clearly offside! I also looked at it and it looked like they should have had a penalty as well – the referee said he dived but to me it looked a stone wall penalty all day long. So, it definitely does even itself out over the season… But four points out of six after away games at Dagenham and Solihull, we can’t really complain…”

“Saturday now we welcome Chesterfield and I would have thought it would be a game between two sides in the top six of the form table. They’re a big club who certainly shouldn’t be where they are, but John (Sheridan), who I know has gone in there and has turned things around for them.”

“They’ve underachieved because of the size of their club but there’s been a lot of disruption there over the last few months. John’s come in and steadied the ship and has done well!”

“We’ve got to get the job done – we’ve achieved nothing yet, but we have got ourselves into a great position just a point below the likes of Dagenham and Boreham Wood so it’s still really tight! We win on Saturday and that gives us the fifty points and only two points behind Chesterfield, but it won’t be easy – we’re both on good runs so it should be a decent game.”

“We’ve got a couple of worries for the weekend. We seemed fine after Saturday but since Alfie Pavey and Jamie Allen are both struggling with knocks – a hamstring and an Achilles – but we’ll have a look at them before kick-off and fingers crossed. They both missed training in the week, so they have to both be concerns…”