HEAD coach Lee Burch believes team boss Steve Hollick deserves a pat on the back for turning AFC Totton’s Southern One South & West season around.

And he reckons Hollick’s decision to bring promising forward Dylan Knight back into the fold from Fawley AFC is a particularly shrewd piece of management.

Having trained with the Stags in pre-season, Knight quickly drifted back to Wessex League with Fawley as Totton explored other options up front.

But Hollick and his coaching staff continued to keep tabs on the youngster’s progress and Knight’s return to the Testwood Stadium has coincided with a blistering run of three straight league victories, featuring 13 goals scored and one conceded.

After a disappointing start to the season, Totton, 14th, are working their way towards mid-table respectability and, as Winchester City recently found to their cost, have hit the sort of form that no team will relish coming up against.

Speaking ahead of 15th-placed Marlow’s visit to Salisbury Road on Saturday, Burch said: “Steve’s got to take a lot of credit. He’s made some big decisions to get us to where we wanted to be at the beginning of the season.

“Bringing Dylan Knight back into the fold was a big call.

“Dylan’s strong, he’s hungry and he doesn’t give teams a second’s peace at the back. He’s got a real good attitude towards training and playing.

“He doesn’t tend to make it through the whole 90 minutes because he works so hard for 70, but that means we can bring on someone else who needs the 20 minutes.

“His workrate’s infectious. When your forwards are working that hard it makes everyone behind them want to do it.

“Dylan did all of pre-season with us, so he knew the way we wanted him to play. He’s fitted straight into the team like he’s never been away.”

Having a full playing personnel to choose from has been key to Totton’s resurgence.

“We’ve kept roughly the same squad for the last three or four games and that helps,” said Burch.

“At the beginning of the season we had a philosophy on how we wanted to play, but we had a lot of injury and unavailability.

“The squad’s in a much better place now.

“Jack Alexander, who’s only 18, has been superb in midfield alongside Dave Allen and Neil Williams. Dave and Neil are in their 30s and they’ve got bundles of experience to pass on to Jack and young Jake Burgess, who is also 18.”

New defensive signing Ian Oliver is unavailable on Saturday, opening the door for left-back Marc Diaper to return after a throat infection.

Negotiations are continuing with Wimborne Town for striker Mark Gamble but it seems unlikely that any deal will be concluded prior to the Stags visiting Cuthbury in the league on Tuesday (January 12).