Steve King’s Deal Town will be looking to stay in touch with the Play Off places at the top of the Southeast division when lowly Beckenham Town visit the Charles Ground. 

Eighteen games in and Deal sit just a handful of points outside the Play Off zone partially due to only drawing one of their games so far, winning nine of the others with last weekend’s trip to the Jersey Bulls a prime example of their season as King explained to KSN this week. 

“It was tough with the result as I didn’t think we deserved to lose two-one.” he told us.

“But in terms of everything else, I was really pleased – I thought our performance levels across the ninety minutes was excellent. We went out on the front foot and gave the ball away high up the pitch and Jersey countered us brilliantly and made it hard for us going one-nil down.”

“But I thought we had a lot of the game, and I think we dominated a side who haven’t lost at home, deservedly got it back to one all and there only looked like one winner at that stage.”

“We missed a good chance in added on time and got suckered at the other end with a counterpunch. Disappointed with the result, but I can’t be disappointed with the players.”

“We had brilliant support and enjoyed our weekend as a Club – we are a Club that sticks together; fans, board, players – we all stuck together and although it was a disappointing weekend in terms of the result, I think that it was a really positive weekend for the Club as a whole overall.” 

Deal go into the weekend’s home game with struggling Beckenham Town eyeing the top end of the table, although the manager admitted, “I don’t look at the gap too much! We set our own internal targets of points we look to get at certain times in the season, and we are actually slightly under where we wanted to be, but not a million miles off!”

“I do think our performances other than the start to the season, our Cup run kick-started us and our performances since then have been really, really good, and I probably don’t think that we have got the points that we deserved from some of them.”

“We are not setting any specific targets this season; we do want to be competitive in every single game and see where that takes us!” 

“So, we will keep trying to perform at the level we have – try and keep people fit which is a massive thing. We only play Saturday to Saturday now which should help and a little bit easier for us giving people a little bit of a rest.” 

“The Charles Ground is becoming a fortress for us. We have always pride ourselves on the home form being good and we had a great win against a strong Faversham side last week which, considering what happened at the start of the season when they beat us very comfortably six-one was a pleasing result.”

“Sheppey is the only game that we have lost at home in quite a while, so we are looking forward to being back at home this weekend in front of our fans and hopefully we will have another good crowd.” 

“We have a tough game against Beckenham, but one where we will be looking to get the three points. If we can perform the way we have done in our last six or seven games, I will be more than happy!”