Three months into their return to Step Four, and Deal Town boss Steve King is a manager who is loving his side’s efforts after their entry into the Isthmian League.

King spoke to us after his side lost one nil to Margate at the Charles Ground on Tuesday night and admitted, “I think last night summed our season up really, we have been in every single game and shown that we can compete at this level.”

“But against the top sides, of whom we seem to have played a lot of, we seem to keep losing by fine margins. That is a learning experience for us – one that we are enjoying, something that we must keep learning, yet something we know that we can!” 

“I expected the start to be very difficult. We have won seven games and I would have been pleased with that at the start, we have beaten all the sides that are around us and below us in the table.

The thing is,” King confessed, “is that we have played a lot of the sides at the top, leaders Beckenham twice, now Margate twice, we will have played Sittingbourne twice after Saturday, we have played Ramsgate and we have played really well in a lot of those games, but not quite been good enough to go and get the result.”

“Sometimes we have lacked a bit of luck, sometimes a bit of quality, but I am really pleased to the way that we have adapted to the new League. I think we have probably adapted better than our current points tally suggests.” 

“By the time that we will have played fifteen League games after Saturday, we will have played seven games against sides who are probably going to end up in the top five of the League.”

“I have to be honest that we are looking forward to getting this run of games out of the way, we knew it was going to be tough when the fixtures were announced, but we look forward to every game.”

“It is nice to get some momentum and if you have an “easier” start on paper, it gives you the opportunity to get some momentum, but if you don’t win those games, you know that there are a lot of hard games coming up.”

“We have almost had the opposite where we have already got a lot of our tricky games out of the way, but that’s meant that it has been hard for us. But what we have done well is that we have been pretty much faultless when we have played the sides outside of the top seven, where we have won every single game.”

“That means that when this run of fixtures are over, we will still be in a mid-table position where we can hopefully keep looking up the table rather than downwards.” 

“We are under no illusions that the games will get easier as every side in this League is very good, but I think that you can see by the League table already that there are four or five sides that are better than the rest.” 

“Our support has been terrific, even Tuesday we had nearly 700 at the game despite there being nearly 3,000 at the Folkestone vs Dover game. But for us to still top 700 and have more than 600 against Hythe at the weekend on a dreary and miserable November afternoon is amazing.”

“We have been delighted with the support and even though we have a lost a fair few games at home, our supporters will have left the games knowing that we have given our all.”

“How we didn’t get something against Margate I have no idea, especially in the second half. Same against Sittingbourne when we were two nil up, I don’t think our supporters have left the ground thinking we have been poor, even when the result hasn’t gone our way.” 

“We have played a lot midweeks and we know that Sittingbourne on Saturday will be a really tough test as they are a really, really good side. We will go there with some pressure off as most people will be expecting a home win and we will look to go and show what we are capable of!”