GARY Monti firmly believes that his Wivenhoe Town team are good enough to make sure that they will be pushing for Thurlow Nunn League division one south promotion in April.

The Dragons have had a testing first part of the season when a number of injuries have hampered them, but they are almost back to full fitness and have managed to keep themselves among the division's front-runners during that spell.

They head into tomorrow's home game against Benfleet sat fourth - one place below their visitors - after three back-to-back wins in the league when they have scored 14 goals.

Wivenhoe's run of four wins in all competitions was ended by a 4-3 defeat at Halstead Town in the Tolleshunt D'Arcy Cup on Tuesday, but Monti was still pleased with his team's performance in that game and feels they have shown this year that they should have sights set on a top-four finish this season.

He said: “I keep saying to people that if we can get to Christmas still up there or thereabouts and then have players back, then we can push on.

“I don’t think we have played a team who are better than us or anyone who we should be scared of.

“We have lost five games in the league; there was the one at Halstead when I thought they were the better side in the second half and Little Oakley away when they were better in the second half again.

“But the other three should not have been lost as it was just naïve defending and silly mistakes, so I’m pretty confident.

“I’ll say now that we should be pushing for promotion with what I’ve seen so far in the league.

“We have done well to stay up there through a difficult spell of injuries and we’re still playing some good football.

“We do try to play nice football, breaking quickly and decisively and we create chances.

“So the target is to stay top four or five until Christmas and then press on.

“I always look at games for other sides and you can see there are sides around us who are going to drop points because anyone can beat anyone."

Monti has also been buoyed to see his side get clear from the injury woes they had earlier in the season and he is expecting the remaining three from that injury list to be back in the next couple of weeks.

“We only have three out now," he added.

“There’s Tom Lakin, who should be playing for the reserves on the 16th (of November) and so should Lewis Hagland and George Hart.

“So all three are within a couple of weeks of being back and they will be like new signings for us because they are all good players."