It has been a historic season for Witham Town in their first campaign in the third tier of English non-league football and they have made it even more special with a record-beating run in the FA Cup.

But it is a season full of challenges for Garry Kimble and his team as the Times’ SIMON SPURGEON reviews the opening half of the campaign: 

 

Witham Town can be quietly pleased with the first half of their inaugural year in the third step of English non-league football – but they’ll be only too aware that there’s still a mountain to climb to stay there.

Garry Kimble’s team entered 2015 perched precariously above the Ryman League premier division relegation zone and know they will need to see an upturn in their results from a disappointing December if they are to stay up.

Just one win from five games – that included four away defeats – went against the positive form they had seen through the first four months of the campaign and is a run that Kimble and his players will want to break quickly.

January, with ten games scheduled, already looks as if it could be a pivotal month and the Town boss knows his team have been playing well, even if results leading up to Christmas didn’t always go their way.

But the position Witham have got themselves into should be all the encouragement they need.

The very fact that they toasted in the New Year outside the relegation zone should be some source of pride.

Having basked in the glory of being division one north play-off winners at the end of last season, Witham came into the Ryman League’s top flight among the favourites to go straight back down. With the taste of promotion Champagne still lingering in their mouths, Kimble told the Times that he knew this season would be a struggle against sides with a wealth of premier division experience and some having vastly greater sums of cash to spend on their squads.

So they should be pleased – maybe quietly at this stage – that they aren’t sitting bottom of the pile looking up at a gulf of points to be made up just to reach safety.

In fact they haven’t been in the bottom four at all.

They have already out-performed what many may have predicted at the start of the season, but that’s not enough for an ambitious manager like Kimble – he wants fifth from bottom at the very least in May.

The Witham boss feels at least 50 points will be required to keep them up.

He has set a target of 12 points from every ten games and with 25 in the bank at New Year, they are on course to achieve that.

Whether 50 points will be the crucial cut-off or not remains to be seen, especially as teams towards the bottom of the table have been taking points off each other and only Bury Town appear to be adrift at the moment.

It won’t take much for a team, Witham included, to be dragged into the relegation positions, so Town know they need to string some results together in the coming months.

They have played fewer games than everyone around them and winning some of that fixture backlog will put them more comfortably into mid-table, but they have to be won first and points on the board are always preferable to games in hand.

Key to their success is likely to be their attacking play.

Witham have won rave reviews from opposing sides for the quality of their forward play and in Luke Callander and Jamie Guy, Kimble has one of the division’s most enviable strike forces, so the manager will be keen to get Callander back as quickly as possible from a hamstring injury.

But it’s not just those front two who have caught the eye.

It was a blow to lose last season’s Player-of-the-Year, James Stevens, to Grays Athletic but Town have goals aplenty in their side with Southend United loanee Ellis Brown, Tom Wraight and Danny Emmanuel impressing from wide positions so far this term.

Add into that, the threat from a dynamic midfield and opponents should continue to fear Witham going forward.

Instead it is at the back that Kimble has been more wary as their defence, stripped of Seb Murfet and Brad Stopher, who have left the club due to both having work commitments, has proved porous at times.

Mistakes are punished in the premier division and Witham have found that out to their cost.

Martyn Guest continues to impress at this level in goal, while Conor Mead has matured as a full-back of quality, but Paul King has suffered with sciatica and his experience has been missed at times.

Kimble has brought in Nikki Beale to add another seasoned head to the heart of the back line, but they need to make sure errors are eliminated and an uncompromising ruthless streak is required at the back. That should cut down the tally of points surrendered from winning positions – like they suffered against Billericay Town, Kingstonian and Lewes – and would surely see Witham climb the table to a point of safety.

One reason for this season to already be memorable for Witham fans, though, is their FA Cup run.

Wins against Bowers and Pitsea, Lewes and Needham Market took Town further in the famous old competition than they had ever been before, but exits from that, the FA Trophy and the Essex Senior Cup mean they only have the Robert Dyas League Cup to distract them from their bid to beat relegation now.

There are an interesting few months coming up.