The John Barton column

GOING into tomorrow's second leg of the Dr Martens League Cup final at Crawley Town with a 4-0 advantage is beyond our expectations.

We said before last week's first leg that we would have liked to take a lead into the return game, and the tie wouldn't have been over if we had gone to Crawley all square.

But to go there 4-0 up is amazing, although we're not going to go out thinking the job has been done. We have to go there fully committed to finishing the job off.

When I was at Everton we played a UEFA Cup tie against Feyenoord, and we thought we had done pretty well after the first leg in Rotterdam, having been beaten narrowly 1-0.

But standing in the tunnel ready to go out for the second leg before a full house, it suddenly struck us that we were 1-0 down and hadn't started yet, and we ended up having to chase the game and lost that one 1-0 as well.

There is a world of difference between that situation and the Southern League Cup final, but the importance to everyone at the football club is still the same.

It is there for everyone to be part of, and hopefully to celebrate at the end of it.

I have been in the game for too long to take any notice of people who say we have won it already. We are going down there to attempt to do a thorough, professional job that will hopefully give us a chance of winning the second leg.

Confidence takes a long while to build up and doesn't take long to break down. We have to keep our heads, and if we were to concede an early goal, we have to go on and get round it.

Going back to the first leg, I thought Jamie Hyde and Martin Weir were outstanding and it was difficult to split the two.

We have become accustomed to that level of performance from Martin, but with Jamie there is the potential and ability to go on.

It has been a learning curve for Jamie and the other young players in the squad. We are pleased that they have grasped their opportunities -- they are committed to playing for the club and want to do well, not only for themselves but for everybody connected with the club.

Football, however, is a game that can put you on top of a pedestal and knock you off it again in a very short space of time, and we discovered that against Fisher on Saturday.

With four games in a week, it was a tall order to win all four but having won the first three, with all due respect to Fisher, there was a chance of us doing that.

You could tell very early on that the same type of performance we had seen in the previous three games wasn't going to be there on Saturday.

Fisher have now done the 'double' over us, and we haven't deserved to win either of the games. Sometimes you think you can get away with things in football, and you can't.

We now have to make sure we take something from the remaining games, starting with a game against the likely champions Margate on Saturday.

It could ultimately decide the title depending on other results this week, but we are only interested in our own situation. It is a good opportunity to measure ourselves against one of the top two sides.

I am sure there will be a decent gate, it will be nice to see what we can do and hopefully we will have our own trophy in the bank by then.