King's Lynn Town 0 Alfreton 0

Adam Lakeland has often talked about the gradual improvement he can see in his King’s Lynn Town side – and the visit of Alfreton to The Walks was the perfect way to prove it.

Anyone who saw the reverse fixture two games into this campaign will agree with the manager: Lynn were bullied that day, losing 3-0 before coming home with their tails between their legs.

Alfreton are big and strong and physical, they disrupt the flow of games, they make games ugly, and if they need to starting wasting time before you’ve even had chance to digest your pre-match pie, they will do. What they can get away with, they will attempt.

Their goalkeeper’s delaying tactics would have been comical had they not been so frustrating. But they took away a point and were probably very happy to do so. Job done.

“Brutal,” was Lakeland’s first response as he spoke after the game.

But he was quick to point out that the Lynn side of Saturday afternoon was a lot different to the one that lost at their place. The visitors rarely troubled the Lynn goal because the back line stuck to their task: Kyle McFadden snapping into tackles, Tom Wilson tangling with Jake Day like a pair of angry octopuses.

Lynn were also denied a goal, as much, perhaps by their own making: Josh Hmami’s set-pieces were poor. “He's his own worst critic to be fair, and he said to me coming off the pitch that he knows that his deliveries weren't great,” said Lakeland. “But on many occasions he's put it on the money, so I can't be too critical of him.”

True. Because while it wasn’t a five star performance, there were positives: the soft underbelly has gone, the creative juices are still there; and the clean sheets are piling up, something of obvious pleasure to the manager.

“That’s our ninth clean sheet,” he said. “We've had six of our other games where we've only conceded one goal and we've not lost any of them, that's 15 games now - we've drawn four 0-0 and we've won the others. So if you keep a clean sheet or you only concede one goal, the statistics tell us that we don't lose and we win many of those games, so we have to be organised.

“You look at all the teams that are up at the top of the league now, it's generally the ones that don't concede many goals. But I do think, if I go back to the Farsley game, we were pushing to try and win it and then lapses of concentration, momentarily letting your foot off the gas, you go and concede and you get nothing out of that game. We haven't done that in recent games here at home and that's incredibly pleasing.”

There was still some frustration, but the signs of growth that date back to August 17 are worth considering.

“Second game of season we went to their place, got bullied, conceded three really poor goals and got nothing out of the game,” said Lakeland. “Today I thought we competed much better, dealt with a lot of their threats pretty well in the main, bar a couple of lapses at throw-ins – one in the second half nearly cost us, but for some excellent defending by Freddie (Sass) to kick it off the line. I think it would have been incredibly harsh if we had lost that game.

“But they are such a difficult team to play against. They kill the game, slow it down, fouls off the ball, referees don't see it, blocking runs when you're trying to run into spaces, persistent fouling trying to disrupt the rhythm and flow to your game.

“They've gone away to some big teams in this league and got good results and they're very good at the way that they play, but they come to disrupt and they're very good at it. And if you lapse concentration at moments they could potentially win that game. But I thought in the main we did pretty well to shut them out and we kept pushing and probing to try and find a way to win. But probably when we reflect we’d probably say that it is a fair result because we didn't work their goalkeeper enough, we didn't execute our set play well enough and sometimes in tight games like this against the best teams in the league it can come down to your execution of set plays and they've nearly won it off one of theirs from a throw in, and we didn't do enough from ours, so that's probably the frustration from our reflections on our performance.”

King’s Lynn Town: Boyes, Crowe (Omotayo 87), McFadden, Wilson, Sass, Taylor, Johnson, Hmami, McCammon, Barnes (Crane 83), Margetts. Subs not used: Coulson, Hughes, Walker.

Alfreton: Willis, Clackstone, Newall, Lund, Anson, Hunt, Cantrill, Salmon (Abbey 66), Fewster (Matwasa 90), Day, Waldock (Perritt 59). Subs not used: Moyo, Askew.

Att: 1,025