Ian Allinson has said he didn’t care how St Albans City got the win as long as they got it – but a 4-0 win over Dartford was some way to make sure of their Vanarama National League South status.

There were a couple of scrappy goals in there but the massive crowd inside Clarence Park didn’t care either.

The City manager said: “We took our chances at good times. It was about us being more patient than we have in recent weeks.

“Once we got the second goal we really settled down in the second half and played some good stuff.

“We lost Michael Thalassitis on Tuesday night and Charlie MacDonald, who has been fantastic for me today, is only 60-70 per cent fit.

“We’ve had to patch things up for today and the squad has been tested over the last few weeks. But everyone has put a shift in for us.

“It was all about today for me and how we planned and prepared. If we had won 1-0 today I wouldn’t have cared. At this stage of the season it’s about how you get over the line.

“Some of the stuff has been a little bit ugly but we’ve used Lee Chappell’s long throw and it’s worked for us. But we’ve worked hard on the set-pieces.”

The turnaround since Allinson took over has been remarkable.

From being relegation certainties in February, form over the last 12 or so games has been more akin to that of champions.

But Allinson wanted to play down his own contribution.

He said: “There’s some good players here and people looked at the side and the team and thought the players had probably under-achieved.

“I thought after Bath I would have to change five or six and I wouldn’t have time to change it.

“So we went back to basics. We got players for certain positions and systems and play to their strengths.

“There was a lot of things that weren’t right and we’ve put them right and hopefully we’ve seen the rewards over the last 10 games.

“The players have been absolutely superb, they’ve listened to what we’ve tried to teach them, they’ve got their heads down and they have got their rewards.”