MANAGER Gary Monti believes he has seen enough from his Wivenhoe Town squad to feel they can challenge for Thurlow Nunn League division one south promotion next year.

It has been a testing campaign for the Dragons, who are sat 14th in the table and close out the current season with a trip to Benfleet on Saturday, but they are staging a stunning finish and have won six and drawn one of their eight league games since Monti took the helm in January.

Ahead of the former Tiptree Jobserve boss coming in, Wivenhoe had been on a torrid run when they had lost 16 games in a row, so turning things around has been a considerable achievement for Monti and his team.

He brought a number of players across with him from Tiptree to remodel the squad and what he has seen from his players has told him that sights should be set high next season.

Their latest success came with a 2-1 win at promotion-chasing Halstead Town on Good Friday and Monti was pleased to see his players continue their strong end-of-season form.

He said: “Our target is to get promoted next year.

“From what I have seen in this league so far and not being detrimental to anybody, with the squad that we have got, we will be going for the top four.

“With the facilities we have got, the support we have, a chairman who has been fantastic and nothing but supportive to me and an excellent committee, we should be looking at that.

“Everything is in place for us to do well.

“I said to them before the Halstead game that it was an opportunity for all of them to show me that they should be in the team for next season and they did.

“We also have another nine who were not available for the game and four of them probably could have been starters so we have a good squad of players.

“Add in two or three in the summer and I feel we will be looking at the top part of the table rather than the bottom.

“It’s going to be about tweaking things, two or three in certain positions and that will be us done as we have some good youngsters as well."

The game against Halstead was won by Wivenhoe in the second half.

Despite being dominated for the opening 45 minutes, the Dragons kept their hosts at bay, allowing two Aaron Donaldson goals after the break to leave Jordan Pavett's late goal as only a consolation for he Humbugs and Monti was impressed with how his side fared against a high-flying team.

He added: “We went to Halstead with nothing to play for and we were just looking to judge ourselves against a team going for promotion.

“We wanted to see how we fared looking ahead to next season and I felt we did fantastically well.

“We’ve learned a lot about this team over the last eight games; we’ve now only lost one – against White Ensign – and that was a game I felt we shouldn’t have lost.

“We haven’t been afraid against any team we have played.

“We came over with a team as a lot of players followed up over from Tiptree so we all knew each other and there are players in there who were already with Wivenhoe who have done really well.

“So we have a good team.

“It would have been much harder had we only had the set of players who were at the club and that’s no disrespect to the players who were here.

“But they had had 16 games without a point and fresh blood was needed.

“What we have done is to bring in players who play as a team rather than as individuals.

“You saw that at Halstead with the way they get back in behind the ball when they need to and work together as a team.

“They’ll probably hate me for saying it, but there are no world-beaters, however, we have a group who play well as a team and they are doing really well."