Deal Town to face three successive home Isthmian South East matches against Ashford United, Margate and Crowborough Athletic

Boss Steve King is optimistic Deal can build some momentum on home soil in their next few matches.

The Hoops, who suffered a 3-1 defeat against early Isthmian South East high-fliers Three Bridges last weekend, will now not hit the road again until Saturday, October 25.

Deal have a Kent derby against Margate this weekend before the visit of Crowborough on Tuesday, having played surprise early strugglers Ashford tonight - all at the Charles Sports Ground - in the meantime.

King said: “Margate got into the play-offs last year.

“They have started to pick up and got a good (2-1) win at Eastbourne at the weekend. They have got a lot of experience.

“Then, Crowborough are recently promoted. They won (1-0) at Ashford and they’re doing well themselves.

“They’re tough games but we back ourselves at home, certainly in Kent derbies when we get good crowds.

"We’ll be looking to be on the front foot. We’ll be looking to attack and we’ll be looking to score some more goals.

“We’re looking forward to it and looking forward to trying to string some results together.”

While the 13th-placed Hoops sit mid-table, second-placed Three Bridges find themselves challenging for top spot in the early standings.

“Big credit to Three Bridges,” King said. “I thought they were a really good side.

“Certainly in the first half, they caused us a lot of problems and they played very well. We got the data through on Monday and they had 80 percent possession in the first half, which is an unbelievable statistic. Fair play to them.

“They played very well and, to be quite honest, we were lucky to get in at 2-1 down. It could have been three or four and we couldn’t have had many complaints. Fair play to them, they were outstanding.

“We made tactical changes at