After suffering a third consecutive home defeat, Ebbsfleet United manager Jamie Day admitted his side have some confidence issues at Stonebridge Road.
The Fleet kicked off 2015 with a 2-0 loss at home to Chelmsford and, after putting in a good first-half performance, seemed to suffer after going behind.
Day was frustrated his side have been unable to score first in the past few home matches.
He said: “When you lose three in a row, once you go a goal down, you get a bit disappointed with it.
“Where we’ve had some good play in the first half and haven’t taken our chances and then go a goal down, the same scenario keeps happening.
“If we can get our noses in front and go on to get two or three, confidence will then change.
“One good thing, hopefully, is that if we can get it right within the next month, we’re still to face all the top teams and, if we can string some wins together, we can get ourselves back up to where we want to be.
“But obviously we need to kick start that and get it going.”
Day added: “Goals change games and, where we’ve had good opportunities, the keeper has pulled off good saves.
“If you score at the right times, then I think you get your foot in front, and we’ve got good enough players to win games and see it out.
“When you don’t and you concede sloppy goals as we did again then people get a bit despondent and a bit disappointed with it.
“We’ve got to try and get ourselves out of that and into the mentality that we’re good enough to get ourselves back into the game and a bit more patient with it.”
Day also revealed he was disappointed with the way his side conceded the two goals and admitted they need to turn their performances around quickly.
“It was a similar sort of pattern to the home games we’ve had so far”, he said.
“In the first half, we’ve had a number of chances and the keeper has pulled off three or four really good saves.
“Then we gave a stupid free-kick away, didn’t mark well enough in the box and ended up going in at half-time 1-0 down when we should have been leading the game, which happened in the other two games here. I was disappointed with that but I thought we played well enough.
“Then, in the second half, we conceded another one from a set-play, which wasn’t good enough.
“If we’re going to defend as we have done in recent games, then we’re going to put ourselves on the back foot.”
He added: “I’ve noticed that teams have come here and got men behind the ball, making them harder to break down, but, if we took our chances in the first half, which we should have done with the players we’ve got, then we’d have put ourselves in a better position and teams will have to come out and start opening themselves up.
“We had half chances in the second half, not as good as the first, but when you concede when we did, then the game is over and you’re chasing it.
“We’ve just had a chat and we can’t keep having chats as we’re now down to eighth, which is unacceptable for the squad that we’ve got and a club of this size.
“We need to put things right quickly, as we’ve got a really big January coming up and we need to start winning games.”
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