Sutton United’s midfield enforcer Glen Southam has called on his team-mates to stand up and be counted.

The 34-year-old hit the winner in the last weekend’s FA Trophy win at Hereford United, and then declared that, for the first time since he joined, he could sense a positive vibe on the pitch.

Now he wants the whole side to show their mettle as they enter a vital phase of the Vanarama Conference South season.

United are without a win in five league games, sitting 16th, but Southam believes the kicks in the teeth the side have taken recently have stopped.

Ahead of this weekend’s trip to Basingstoke, Southam said: “I won’t look at the league table until we’ve been on a run of four or five results.

“Right now, as well as we’re playing, we admit we’re underachieving a bit.

“But it’s coming to that time of the year when you have to stand up and be counted.

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Making a move: Sutton United’s Shaquille Hippolyte-Patrick skips past the Hereford left back                                     Picture: Paul Loughlin

“When the pitches are hard and the nights are cold and wet, you find out who your men are and I believe we have a squad full of them.

“We all know that Dos’ teams are capable of going on a run after Christmas, but to be honest, I don’t want to rely on one of those runs, I want to get started now.”

Although United have lost their past two league games, Southam insists there has been improvement, and a severe lack of lady luck.

“We have been playing well since as far back as Farnborough [October 18] – we’ve had a structure and we’ve looked a lot more like a team,” he said.

“We’ve drawn a lot of games where we have been winning, we lost at Bromley, which was a kick in the teeth. We were the better side and deserved to win.

“We were getting to that point where we were wondering ‘What have we got to do?’

“I know you make your own luck in football, but we were having so many decisions go against us – when we lost to Eastbourne, the lad should have been sent off for his tackle on me, and then there was the last minute penalty at Hemel.”

He added: “It was like one kick in the teeth after another. But I have been here a couple of months, and Saturday was the first time I looked at the squad and realised the gaffer has got a decision to make on players.

“The kind of decisions that managers like.”