WE'VE reached the point where it is now harder and harder to argue that Newport County AFC fans should be content this season with mere progress.

This is a difficult assessment, not least because all evidence surrounding the club suggests progress is as good as any of us could or should dare to dream of.

Off-the-field Newport County AFC are a League Two club, from top to bottom and they've only just started to look comfortable at that level, but you don't dish out silverware based on who has the biggest budget, owns the best stadium or has the most thriving commercial department.

Football success has always been about wins and losses, points and prizes and by any measuring stick, Newport County's form on the field suggests a promotion push.

At the start of the campaign, assessing Newport as a possible promotion team would have been madness, because at that point, off the field factors are a big part of the measuring process.

If Bury has a wage budget that is twice the size of the County, they'd be the sort of team you'd consider it foolish to predict the Exiles to finish ahead of. But currently, that's exactly the situation. Ditto Plymouth, Southend or Portsmouth.

Surely Luton, with their average attendances in five figures and Kenilworth Road, which can be a real fortress, would be steamrolling their way to back-to-back promotions? Yet a County win on Saturday will put them level with the Hatters and within a sniff of the automatic promotion berths.

County's wage budget is that of a mid-table League Two side, their attendances are that of a mid-table outfit and they retained 85% of a squad that finished the previous campaign extremely poorly with crowds dwindling and even the very pitch they played on betraying them.

If despite all that, you were tipping a top seven finish back in January, your heart was surely ruling your head and I went for the standard reporter stance of tipping Newport to do just a little better than last season, when they finished 14th but were closer to the bottom two than the top seven in terms of points.

With some seemingly shrewd summer acquisitions that seemed a fair assessment - though it required a leap of faith that the drainage work would be a success - but my faith waned seriously when the Exiles began the campaign in such poor fashion.

Not to the point of wanting a change in manager - the average length of tenure in the Football League for a manager is under a year and that's far from conducive to long-term success - but to the point of believing a Great Escape season long relegation battle might be our narrative for a gloomy campaign that would end with a larger overhaul of playing personnel than this summer.

That was August, but County have transformed since then and have in fact been statistically the hardest team in League Two to beat throughout the autumn and have continued that status into the winter period.

County are unbeaten in nine games and have lost only once in their last 17 and you can't argue with those numbers.

Similarly, you can't argue with their performances. Let's take for example and just for a change Tottenham, whose league position is improved vastly by four away victories all obtained with injury-time winning goals. And often, like on Sunday at Swansea, the result was hardly merited.

Not so with the Exiles. They've been forced to win ugly and undeservedly very rarely and if anything will look at drawn games with Cambridge, Hartlepool and Accrington and think they should probably be six points better off. The performance against Cambridge, especially, was a benchmark in terms of the quality on show.

We've seen plenty from County to make us believe they can continue to contest this season, they've become a decent defensive unit, have an absolute embarrassment of riches in midfield and in Chris Zebroski and Aaron O'Connor have finally found a potential winning ticket in attack.

But just as pertinently, we've seen League Two now, we are 20 games into the campaign and before you know it will be heading into the second half of the season and frankly, there is absolutely nothing to fear.

I don't see a side playing bold and innovative football like Rochdale, I don't see a powerhouse club with a big budget looking imposing like Chesterfield - though Luton are the closest comparison - and I certainly don't see a side like Scunthorpe, capable of going on an incredible undefeated run, with Newport so far looking the closest comparison.

There are 12, maybe even more sides in League Two that will be thinking similarly and that there is no reason why they can't put a run together and get into the play-offs at least. Newport have already done that. They just need to carry on as they are and that is a significant difference to last season.

At this point last term, County had scrambled a lot of points as an unknown quantity, this term, they've become a genuine force.

The club as a whole might not be ready for promotion, but we would have said the same when they hit the Conference and we definitely said the same when they finally made it back to the big time.

The Exiles have been the form side in League Two for over three months and it's becoming harder and harder not to dream that they can carry it through to May.