Dover Athletic striker George Nikaj confident team will surprise people in National League South this season despite pre-season relegation predictions

Striker George Nikaj insists Dover will surprise a lot of people in National League South this season.

Many have predicted Whites to go straight back down on their return to playing Step 2 football.

An opening-day 3-2 National League South defeat to fellow newly-promoted team AFC Totton last Saturday - failing to recover from an awful first 45 minutes despite 22-year-old Albanian Nikaj’s second-half brace - is unlikely to change many minds on how the Crabble club will fare this campaign.

But the Academy graduate pointed out few expected Jake Leberl’s men would be in the promotion mix last term, either, as play-off glory ensured their Isthmian League return proved to be a brief one.

“Last year, they wrote us off and we got promoted so they can carry on writing us off,” Nikaj said. “I think we will surprise a lot of teams.

“Saturday, when you look at our performance, especially in the second half, yes we were 3-0 down, but we were good at times.

“We just have got to move on from the first half because the first half wasn’t good enough. I don’t think we will play like that again this season.

“I think we’ll do all right this season. We’ll surprise a lot of people.”

Nikaj admitted Whites were well below-par in the first 45 minutes of their campaign as they found themselves 3-0 down at Crabble.

He then struck twice after the restart, converting substitute Francis Mampolo’s left-wing delivery before a close-range stoppage-time header after good right-wing play by Roman Charles-Cook and Decarrey Sheriff, but it wasn’t quite enough to complete a memorable comeback.

Nikaj reflected: “First half, we were nowhere near the standards we set for ourselves.

“We went in disappointed, fuming, and we knew we had to come out with a