SATURDAY'S trip to Cambridge United will be our tenth League game of the season and as such should be viewed as a significant milestone in our season.

By the ten-game mark, the League table has normally started to take more significant shape and fans can really start to assess their team's chances.

We must be delighted then to find ourselves in third place in the table, and just three points off the top.

We said we wanted to get off to a good start and not be judged on just four games, like we were last season when we made a decent start but failed to build on it.

After Saturday, we will be almost a quarter of the way through the season and we are still up there challenging.

Now the aim has got to be to make sure we are still up there at Christmas. Teams that are near the top during the festive season tend to stay there until the very end.

On Tuesday against Darlington we didn't play well but we got the points, which was all important.

Looking at the other results from the night, the theory that anyone can beat anyone in this division is being proved.

It was so important that we did win then.

Although we are approaching the ten-game mark, there are no real gaps developing in the table.

A couple of good wins at the moment can take a team right up the ladder.

Had Darlington taken the points then they would have been in the play-off frame.

As it is they have been sucked towards the bottom of the table.

And although significant gaps have yet to appear, the next three games might start to see a handful of teams breaking away at the top.

Fortunately, we are at the right end but we must stay there.

Three games will take us up to 12 League games for the season, which is also quite significant.

When I got promotion with Burnley, we did it on a six-game rota working on the principle that you took two points every game.

Currently, we are just one point short but we are still showing promotion form and hopefully we will make that point up over the next three games.

We are in the shake-up and definitely there is a lot more belief about the place, compared to last season when I think we were still rebuilding and were happy just to make progress.

Now we go to places like Bury and lose 2-1 and are deeply disappointed. I think that is a sign of how far we have come.

There is certainly a good atmosphere around the club, everyone is upbeat and going into the social club after a game you can really sense it.

There is a lot more confidence about the place too and keeping our unbeaten home record intact obviously helps.

Long may it continue.

Updated: 10:02 Thursday, September 19, 2002