Lordswood showed their defensive qualities again last Saturday in a 1-0 victory over Tunbridge Wells.

Matt Barman’s side are the only team in the Southern Counties East Premier Division with a single-figure goals-against record - an impressive feat so far for a backline that lacks experience.

An own goal won them the game at Martyn Grove on a weekend where many matches fell victim to the weather.

Barman said: “We have let in five in the last nine league games, that is with two teenagers and two 20-year-olds in the back four at the weekend, a 19-year-old goalkeeper and an 18-year old holding midfielder protecting them in front.”

With just one loss in their opening 11 league games, Lordswood have continued to keep in touch with the top teams, with games in hand over those above. But Barman knows not to get carried away.

“We don’t want to get complacent,” he said.

“Because of the way this league is, you could lose a couple on the bounce, that is when you are going to see who’s who. It will be who can turn it around - that might be the key to who gets in the play-offs.

“I was reasonably happy with the performance (on Saturday), I thought we were the better side first half, it was more even second half, not many chances by both sides.

“Both defences played pretty well. We scored from a corner, they scored a similar one but there was a foul on the keeper. There wasn’t a lot in it.

“We were playing in tricky conditions and fair play to the groundsman for getting it on.

“We didn’t want to lose a game where we are a few behind. We are a really young squad and we don’t want to put too much pressure on ourselves with fixtures. Some of the teams have had two or three, or even four more than us.”

Lordswood ended the weekend in the top 10 and Barman feels the league is wide open.

He said: “It is a good league. With the introduction of the play-offs, I read at the start of the season that 12-13 teams might fancy themselves to get in and around it, which I doubted, but now I am going, ‘actually they probably will’.

“Anyone who wins their games in hand in that top half will be in and around it, any side around mid-table will be thinking ‘three or four wins and we’re in it’.

“When you are in such a competitive league everyone is taking points off each other. Everyone is still thinking ‘if we can put a run together we have an outside opportunity’.

“I feel we are in a league where if you don’t play well you get beat, it doesn’t matter who you are playing and that is what a league should look like.

“I still think the bigger hitters, budget-wise, will be in and around it towards the end but that isn’t always the case, we have seen Leicester win the Premier League so anything is possible. We have seen Cray Valley go up against Charlton.

“Am I looking at the table? No, not yet, we just go about our business. I have always said second half should look better than the first half. It’s about progressing, and everyone else will be thinking the same.

“There’s a fantastic opportunity for teams to get in and around it. At the moment, we are no nearer to knowing how it will pan out as we were at the start of the season.”

Lordswood are at lowly Sutton Athletic on Saturday and host bottom side Kennington on Tuesday night.

Barman said: “We beat them (Sutton) at home earlier in the season but it wasn’t one-way traffic.

“We’ve got a couple of suspensions for the weekend. We will mix the squad up, we gave some good minutes to boys who have been around the fringes against Whitstable in the cup last week and they did superbly for 70 minutes.

“We won’t take Sutton for granted and then we play Kennington on the Tuesday night. They have started to improve results and they have one or two new players in.”