Darren Byfield saw the Reds fight back from conceding a controversial penalty to take the points at Kings Langley on Saturday and then admitted it was his side’s best result of the season.

But he won’t let his players relax going into Saturday’s match with struggling St Ives Town, insisting they’ll be taking nothing for granted against a side with just one league win to their name.

“Kings Langley were fighting to get out of the bottom three but we’ve stayed in the game and come away with the points,” the manager said. “It was the best result of the season for me, not the best performance but the best result. They were hard to break down.

We needed the win against Bishops Cleeve in the cup because it gave us that belief that we could go and get goals even when we have fallen behind.

When we’ve done that before I’ve not seen us manage the game right, trying to stay in the game and get a goal back. But we did it in the cup and we did it again at Kings Langley so it’s another box that we can tick.

St Ives might be down there but they have been in the majority of their games and could have picked up more wins. This is a weird league and we can take nothing for granted. We need to go into Saturday’s game with the right attitude.

I don’t think we knew where a goal was coming from last season but we now look like a team that is going to score goals. #

We do want to get back to our clean sheets though. It was encouraging that their [Kings Langley] goal didn’t come from open play but from a penalty – and a penalty that should never have been given. I spoke to the referee who said he would look at it and apologise if he was wrong – well he needs to apologise because the player is ushering the ball out and it’s the harshest penalty I have ever seen.”

Midfielder Kevin Monteiro came off the bench at Kings Langley after a lengthy lay-off with an ankle injury.

Byfield added: “It was good to have Kev back. He came on for half hour and I thought he was superb. He is a very good payer who is full of energy, very good in the air and he’s also someone who can score goals – and midfield is an area where we do need to get a few goals from. He is a massive asset to the team.

Vinny has started to take part in some light training. We are working on his fitness so that when he comes back he’s not playing catch-up even though he will be short of match fitness. We know what he brings and there’s not many like him in this league.
“It was a blow for him to get injured so early in the season. As a player you want to be taking part but his attitude has been spot on and he’s been working hard to get back.”