Horsham manager Di Paola: 'Our first aim is survival'

A 2-1 home victory over Wingate & Finchely on Tuesday saw the Hornets move up to fourth. The Yellows have taken 14 points from seven games and are five points off top-of-the-table Folkestone Invicta.

Horsham's fine early season form has many at The Camping World Community Stadium dreaming of a promotion push, but Di Paola was quick to temper these expectations.

He said: "We’ve had a half-decent start but I’m definitely not getting too excited. I certainly don’t think we’ve cracked it.

"It is early days and there’s a lot of good teams still to play. A few teams below us haven’t quite kicked into gear yet and they’ll kick on.

"This league is tough and we’ve got some really tough games coming up. It’s just nice to get some points on the board.

"You’ve got your target for safety and the number of points you need to stay up. That’s what we’re aiming towards at the moment.

"You go into a new league and your first aim is survival. If you get to that point you can start looking at other things."

Charlie Harris and Chris Smith gave Horsham a 2-0 first-half lead before Tage Kennedy netted what proved to be a consolation goal after the break.

Di Paola added: “First half we were brilliant. We played some good football. In the second half we did the ugly stuff well.

“Sometimes people don’t take into account the opposition and what they’re doing in games. I thought it was really good to see that we could do that side of it.

“I think their manager would have got into them at half-time. He made some changes and adjusted things and they came at us.

“But at the same time they had one shot and they scored from it. They had more of the ball in the second half but they didn’t really trouble us.”