WATCHING Havant and Waterlooville in the FA Cup on Sunday reminded me of our deserved victory at Westleigh Park last month.

It’s great to see teams in our division and the Southern League doing well in the FA Cup. Havant were really unlucky against Brentford, losing 3-1, but I don’t think they are consistent in the league. They are like us at the moment, they blow hot and cold.

Chelmsford look like the only team who could run away with the title at the moment because they seem to be the only side who are performing week in, week out.

But we are in the top half of the table, it’s only November and we have had an above average start to the season.

Hopefully, the three games without a point are behind us now.

Following three straight defeats, I was pleased with the commitment, work-rate and desire shown by the players to battle for a win at Hampton and Richmond on Saturday.

The fans could see the pitch wasn’t the best in the world at the Beveree Stadium and we couldn’t play a lot of football on it. It suited them more and we had to battle hard and that’s what got us our result.

We changed the system to 4-3-3 because we needed to stop their full-backs getting quick ball up to their front two.

That’s what we lacked against Welling. Their players had a lot of time to pick out decent passes and the credit for Saturday’s success in that respect goes to our front three. But everybody did well at the weekend, the three midfielders worked really hard and that gave us a lot of confidence.

The system we play depends on who we have fit and the opposition but we have had success and failure with both formations so we will keep working on them.

Jemiah Richards did really well coming in for Ollie Bar-nes. He’s very enthusiastic and is still learning, he’s come on in leaps and bounds since pre-season.

If he isn’t playing, he’s wat-ching Jon Richardson, an ex-perienced professional, and trying to learn from him and every time he has come in he’s not let us down.

The attitude of those who didn’t play was great and long may that continue.

People will get chances and, to be fair, the 11 who played took theirs. The team used to pick itself, now that isn’t the case.

I have some decisions to make for this weekend’s trip to Thurrock. Kettering beat them 4-1 in the Setanta Shield last week so I will speak to Poppies’ manager Mark Coop-er and a few others to see what they are like.

Preparation is hard without a scout but that’s the way things are. I owe a lot of managers a lot of favours because they are doing me massive favours at the moment.

We have got to the point in the season where we have played most teams so I have got information about most of the clubs but, like us, formations and teams change.