Hollands & Blair beat bottom side Lydd Town in their fight to avoid relegation in Southern Counties East Premier Division – Darren Blackburn’s side head to Holmesdale this Saturday

Hollands & Blair climbed up the table last weekend with an important win in their battle against the drop - but their manager won’t be complacent.

Darren Blackburn’s men beat bottom side Lydd Town 3-1 as, with second-bottom Lordswood also losing, they were able to put further distance between themselves and the bottom two in the Southern Counties East Premier Division.

Victory over Lydd came after back-to-back defeats against league leaders Faversham and Blackburn will be hoping they can start enjoying more wins in the weeks ahead.

He said: “We’ve pushed ourselves back up the table again into a more respectful position with games coming up that we can be more competitive in.

“We’ve just played Faversham twice and you can’t go into those games expecting to get anything, but you just hope you might get something and we didn’t.

“Now you’re looking at a run of games where you feel like we can compete and if we’re on our game, we can ask questions of teams and hopefully put a few more points on the board.

“We’ve still got to be conscious of [the teams below] because every team’s proven. You’ve got to be careful about some of these teams below us.

“Kennington have recently gone on a good run and Bearsted won 5-2 the other day. I know they lost last weekend but that’s a tough fixture at Fisher.

“All the teams around us are capable, everyone in that league can beat anyone on their day, so you’ve got to show respect and humility and go into every game with the same focus.”

Joe Thomas opened the scoring for Blair against Lydd on 32 minutes but it was all-square before the break after Ryan Philpott struck for the visitors.

Ade Batula restored Blair’s advantage from the penalty spot and Devonte West hit a third with 10 minutes left.