Dover assistant manager Jake Leberl expects the Vanarama National League promotion race to go to the wire and he plans to relish every minute of it.

Dover travel to bottom club North Ferriby on Saturday, in sixth place after Barrow's midweek win at Macclesfield. However, only four points separate the sides in fifth down to eighth.

Leberl says he expects the top positions to chop and change a lot between now and the end of the season.

He added: “It could go right down to the last game of the season, both in terms of who wins the league, who gets into the play-offs and who gets relegated.

“There are a lot of teams playing for play-off places, including us, and that’s the beauty of working with Chris (manager Chris Kinnear). We always seem to get to this stage of the season with something to play for.

“There’s nothing worse than sitting mid-table and turning up for training with nothing really riding on it. We’ve done well so far but we’ve just been on a steady run the whole way through.

"We’ve not suffered a really bad dip of form but equally we’ve not had a great run where we’ve gone unbeaten for a long period. I think it’s within us to do that and if we can in the last 15 games, we’ll definitely be there or thereabouts.”

Leberl admitted the arrival of James Caton, Nicky Deverdics and Bondz N’Gala had given everyone at Crabble a real lift, adding that the return of Deverdics – signed on loan from Hartlepool – showed the value of Whites staying in touch with their former players.

He said: “That’s one of our fortes as a club, We sign lads who are ambitious so that when they they get the chance, like Nicky, to play in the Football League, they go with our blessing."