Mansell takes heart from Burgess Hill Town’s efforts at Ramsgate

But he also concedes the Sussex Senior Cup defeat on penalties at home to Steyning Town last week shows there’s plenty of work to do.

The Hillians went two up at Ramsgate on Saturday through Dan Perry and Kieran Rowe’s goals but ended up losing 4-2.

Mansell said: “Ramsgate are a top, top side and they’re top of the league for a reason, but we took a lot of positives. And I think the first 30 minutes, we showed how good we really can be, both in possession and out of possession.

"Our job now is how we make that sustainable over longer periods in the game to make sure we can reach the heights that we know we can achieve.

“The boys have bought into a different way of playing, which has been good, and they’ve adapted to that quickly.

"They’ve been brilliant with the youngsters coming into the squad, they’ve bought an energy. I think we’re playing front-foot football.”

Reflecting on the Senior Cup defeat, with the shootout loss following a 2-2 draw, Mansell said: “We were not quite at the tempo we’d been playing at in previous games. Although I thought we did okay, I didn’t think we were quite at it as much as we were against East Grinstead and Three Bridges.”

Hill missed out on midweek action when Tuesday night’s planned home game with Cray Valley was frozen off.

They go to Merstham on Saturday and Mansell said: “Merstham are a different challenge for us in terms of where they are in the table, but we know they’ve bought in some new players and another young coach so we know they’ll be a threat.”

The Hillians are eight points adrift of the play-off places in 12th and beginning to build form, but Mansell is coy on their ambitions:

“We’re looking at moving up one to two spaces, then we’ll look to move up another one to two and as the season draws to an end, we’ll look at where that’s taken us and we might mention the play-offs,” he said.