Darlington midfielder Stuart Elliott is looking for his first league goal today in the derby at Hartlepool.

Elliott, who was signed from Newcastle during the summer, has scored three goals for Quakers already, but all of them have come in Worthington Cup ties, including that amazing winner to knock Nottingham Forest out of the competition.

"I'm really enjoying myself but I thought I had my worst game so far against Carlisle last Saturday," he said.

"Maybe it's the fact that I'm not used to playing two games per week on a regular basis. When I was at Newcastle, it was maybe once a week, or even once a fortnight when I played for the reserves. The week off has been good for me, so I can recharge my batteries.

"The midfielders have been told by the manager to score goals. We're creating plenty of chances at the moment but we're just not taking them. We're missing some easy chances too, which is putting us under pressure a little bit.

"We're beating teams 1-0 but we're missing chances to add to our score. And when you're only leading 1-0, something might go wrong to give our opponents a half chance to equalise.

"But we're really pleased with our defence and we've got one of the best records in the league. If we were scoring more goals, we'd be even happier!"

Quakers have been slow to start games at times this season and have played some of their best football after half-time.

"We need to start the game well on Saturday," said Elliott.

"We must start games a lot brighter than we have been. It seems that we're playing for only 45 minutes out of 90. Lately the manager has had to give us a roasting at half time to get us going again. We can't afford to give teams a goal start, like we did at Macclesfield, Cheltenham and Shrewsbury.

"A win can really get us up there in the top three or four.

"We were fifth after we played York, but then defeats at Shrewsbury and Cheltenham dropped us down to 12th.

"We don't want to throw away the hard work of the last couple of home games by losing today."

Elliott played five games for Pools when he was on loan to them from Newcastle two seasons ago and ended up on the losing side 3-2 against Quakers at Victoria Park.

"The manager, Gary Bennett, played that day and scored the first goal. He's been reminding us about it this week!"