Adam Lakeland is refusing to drop his guard as he takes his King’s Lynn Town team to doomed Bishop’s Stortford on Tuesday night.

Stortford’s relegation was confirmed on Saturday, while Lakeland knows that a win will be a huge step towards survival for Lynn, who beat fellow strugglers Rushall Olympic at the weekend.

That battle against the drop has taken an upward trajectory in recent weeks, with Lynn on an eight-game unbeaten run, which sees them two places above the drop zone with eight games remaining.

The bookies would have Lynn odds on to win at Stortford, but their hosts' cut and dried position means no one really knows what to expect from their players. Will they be free from the pressure and perform better, or will they be disheartened by what has happened?

Lakeland won’t take any chances.

“It's going to be a tough game, like they all are,” he said. “I think it's fair to say that their position in the league’s probably looked quite bleak now for a number of weeks, but it's still going to be a tough game because players go on to any pitch with self pride and they'll want to put in a performance themselves.

“We’ve just got to be better than we were today (against Rushall) and go and be hungry to try and get another good result.”

Lynn have won three in a row now, against teams not too far from them in the table, and there is a noticeable change of mentality within the squad.

“I think any position that you're in in the league, if you can go and win two or three games in a row, it makes a massive difference because everybody is pretty much beating everybody,” said Lakeland.

“You can never predict the results in this division and that's why you've just got to look after yourselves, because if you start looking too much at what other teams are doing and you think, 'well if they'll lose there and they'll win here', it goes the complete opposite. And if you don't look after your own performances and results you're in big trouble and I think that's what we've done incredibly well the last few months. We’ve just kept focused on ourselves and the things that we can control. I think the performance levels in the main have been very consistent - when we've not been great, we've been organised and that's enabled us to get results.

“It’s five wins now in our last seven games, which is excellent, and the players deserve a lot of credit for that, but from my side, we've still got eight games to go, it's 24 points still to play for and we've got to compete to try and get as many of them as we can.”

Lakeland is expected to have striker Ben Stephens - who missed the win over Rushall with an ankle injury - available. That weekend win completed Lynn's first double of the season and after the 3-2 home win over Bishop's Stortford in October, they will be looking for another.