Dover assistant manager Jake Leberl is certain Maidstone will stay in the National League.

Whites took four points from their Kent rivals over Christmas and new year to leave United one place above the relegation zone.

Leberl knows how tough the first season is but he's confident his old team-mate Jay Saunders - they played together under Whites boss Chris Kinnear at Margate - will lead them to safety.

He said: "Jay's like one of us really. He’s done a fantastic job and he’s had promotion after promotion and now, all of a sudden, like we noticed when we came up, it’s a tough league.

"He's probably scratching his head how’s he come away from this losing 4-1 (on New Year's Day) but we were there the first season we came up.

"We got a bit of experience in the loan market to get us out of a bit of a hole and we’ve just gone from strength to strength.

"Obviously Chris has such experience, he knows what he wants but it’s hard to get players these days and I think Jay says the same. It’s very difficult to attract players to clubs in Kent.

"There’s not many lads locally around that can cope at this level it seems, for whatever reason, and then you get down to finances and all that with the other southern clubs paying so much money.

"So it’s difficult but I’m sure from what I’ve seen over the two games, the spirit here and the togetherness that Maidstone have got, I really think they won’t have a problem staying up."