It’s been a great couple of weeks for the Academy boys who have really settled in well and putting in some great performances.

We started off the month with Dorking at home in the cup for the National South and the National North Division sides. It’s a really good cup with the top division teams in it.

Dorking brought their main B team down – that’s the side under their first team – and I said to the boys afterwards that it looked like a walk over, but it was probably the best Academy performance I’ve seen in the whole eight years that I’ve been here. We ended up winning 8-0 and it was just a really good, energetic performance and great to watch.

We then went away to Southend last week, back in the league, and they’d won every game so far this season. We took the game to them. We probably should have won more, but we won 2-0 with another good clean sheet away from home and another win.

Then, it was back in the league this week, with Dorking again. We were 1-0 up at half-time and we wanted them to push a little harder. We ended up scoring seven goals in the second half. It was another top performance.

Richie Atkins has been our captain and he’s been superb. He has been leading in every single game and getting great numbers of goals and assists. He’s knocking on the door of the first team, week in, week out. Kelechi Nkwocha on the wing has also been a stand-out for us. He’s been causing an absolute nuisance in all these games.

But I’ve just got to give credit to the boys. They’re a really good group to coach. They work really hard and there’s graft in every single game possible. They’re really together, and I think that’s shown in their performances.

They are a group who are always wanting to do more and wanting to get better, which is great.

We had a couple of poor results last month, but one was when a lot of the boys were away for half term and we took a different-looking team.

But that’s what we are here to do – give everyone opportunities at such young ages to make sure they’re all getting the right number of chances.

Those results have solidified us a little bit more together. We know where the strengths are and what to improve on, which has shown in the last few weeks and long may it continue.