Whitstable boss Jamie Coyle has been struck by the level of professionalism in Southern Counties East this season.

Town are sixth in the Premier Division following Omotunmise Akanni’s injury-time winner in a 1-0 success at Kennington on Tuesday night.

Coyle was impressed with Ton and that goes for the league in general, with Step 5 football coming a long way over the years.

“The standard in terms of the coaching and management teams and the players is huge this year,” said Coyle.

“Last year, there’d be teams you’d turn up to and think we’re going to have a fairly easy game but that isn’t the case any more because everyone has improved massively.

“The quality of coaching and understanding of the game in this league is the highest it’s ever been.

“You go back and there was no analysis on the opposition and everyone’s now got the Veos (match footage) and data vests.

“Go back 15-20 years, there were people having fags at half-time at this level. I saw it with my own eyes when I first came into non-league at 17.

“The change in professionalism in the game is unbelievable and it’s all filtered down from higher levels.

“It’s good to test yourselves against the good coaches and managers and players in this league now.

“It’s going to be a real open, exciting season.”

Whitstable visit second-placed Holmesdale this Saturday (3pm).

They’re something of a surprise package but not to Coyle, who works with their management team and players in his day job running the education side of Welling United’s academy.

“What Holmesdale have done is employ two of the Welling academy coaches as first-team managers - Reece Parara and Simon Beard - and they’re basically playing all the academy players,” said Coyle.

“So they’re a young, energetic, hungry team with loads of mobility and they’re absolutely flying.

“I’m pleased for them because I work with a lot of their kids with their education in the academy.

“I know all of their players, basically, and it’ll be a real tough game.

“They’ve got youth on their side and we’ll have to match their mobility and energy to get a result.”

Whitstable were edged 1-0 at home by leaders VCD last Saturday, Charlie Heatley with the second-half winner.

But they bounced back at Kennington where Akanni - known as T - scored in the second minute of added time, having missed an open goal moments earlier.

Coyle said: “T was really disappointed to come off the bench and miss that opportunity and you think that was your chance to win the game.

“But fortunately, their keeper’s made a mistake from a cross and dropped the ball and it’s hit T and gone in.

“We had a little bit of luck but we’ve had some real bad luck this season, so you hope it levels out.

“I was really impressed with Kennington but I think over the 95 minutes we deserved to win the game.

“It was our first clean sheet of the season as well.”