Ebbsfleet boss Dennis Kutrieb heaped praise on supersub Darren McQueen after he came off the bench with devastating effect on Saturday.

McQueen wrapped up a 3-1 win over Bath in National League South – it was the third time already this season that he’s come off the bench to find the target at Stonebridge Road.

The 27-year-old has featured mainly as a wing-back for the Fleet but he hasn’t forgotten his goalscoring instincts.

“It was a beautiful goal,” admitted Kutrieb. “You can’t ask for any more from a substitute. Omari Sterling-James was struggling with illness, we were not sure if he was going to play.

“We know Darren is a massive threat there. It’s three goals now when he has (come on), they are all the same sort of goals.

“I’m proud of him, he does all the hard work and the things he needs to do, he takes things on board. He was a striker in the past and how many runs he did to track back I don’t know, but it’s exactly what we want to see.”

The Fleet could have added to their tally with Rakish Bingham missing a number of good openings.

It mattered little in the end and Kutrieb was not going to criticise his team after they scored three goals against a Bath side that had won their three previous games.

“We scored three goals against a good side so we need to stay grounded and humble,” said the Fleet boss.

“If you score three goals in a top game you have to be happy as a manager.

“I can’t remember Mark Cousins having to make a big save for us, and that makes me proud. I would be surprised if they are not in the play-offs at the end of the season, they are a very good side and caused us problems when we didn’t do the right things.

“We punished them with the first mistake they did and that helped us a lot. I was happy we took the first chance in the game as it gave us more security.

“They asked many questions. I was proud of the boys. We showed good resilience defending and limited them to very little.

“I could see their bench was not happy about many decisions by the referee. From an obvious point of view it was a foul (by Cody Cooke) but when we scored the second (goal) they said it was a foul (on Cooke), I don’t know I need to watch it back.”

It’s now seven wins on the spin for the Fleet – but the manager is not surprised by their impressive start to the season.

Report: Ebbsfleet 3-1 Bath

“I’m not surprised in football, anything can happen,” stated Kutrieb. “If they’d scored a goal at 1-0 and it wasn’t given as a foul, we might have needed to go again.

“We looked at times a little bit leggy so you could see it was a tough week for us. We needed to put a big shift in to get the three points.

“We want to enjoy the win as it was a tough game.”