Nicky Southall faces a swift reunion with his old club when Lydd host Lordswood in a bottom-two clash this weekend.

Southall left Lords by mutual consent at the start of November but quickly returned to management.

His first league game as Lydd boss comes against Lordswood at the Lindsey Field on Saturday (3pm).

And it’s a big one, too, with the Lydders bottom of the Southern Counties East Premier Division and Lordswood just a point ahead of them.

“Funnily enough, the first league game is against Lordswood at home,” said Southall, following his appointment as Lydd head coach.

“Timing is everything, isn’t it? You’ve got to play them sometime.”

Southall spent 10 months at Martyn Grove, leading Lordswood away from danger last season and making a flying start to the current campaign.

They went on a record-breaking run to the FA Cup second qualifying round, facing Sittingbourne in a live TV game, and also reached the first round of the FA Vase.

But results tailed off and Southall left after five successive league defeats.

“There were things behind the scenes that weren’t for me, we weren’t on the same sheet,” said Southall.

“We had a good FA Cup run, we earned the club a lot of money and generated a lot of interest, we got them live on TV.

“But behind the scenes with staff changes, I wanted to get a new assistant in, it just wasn’t working out, so I decided to call it a day and look elsewhere. All the best to them.

“I got a good side together, we had an unbelievable cup run and I got manager of the month.

“Once that FA Cup run finished a lot of the motivation with the players went.

“Players went away on holiday and I just don’t get how you can arrange to go on holiday when the season starts, so I was losing a lot of big players, and we couldn’t really recover.

“When you’re playing catch-up and you have a couple of defeats, the confidence starts going.”

Southall’s first game as Lydd boss - a Challenge Cup second-round tie against Rochester on Saturday - was abandoned at half-time due to a waterlogged pitch.

The Lydders were 2-0 up at the time, thanks to goals from Luke Burdon and Tyler Sterling.