Boss Simon Austin admits Faversham need to start collecting points sooner rather than later ahead of his first home match in charge.

The Lilywhites, bottom of Isthmian South East, begin a potentially key period at Salters Lane this Saturday. They host East Grinstead before facing Sevenoaks on Tuesday.

"It’s not that early,” said Austin. “We have a lot of games coming up and it’s going to be difficult for ourselves to get out of it [the fight to avoid relegation] if we don’t start picking up points soon.

“Every game is important and that starts on Saturday.

“It’ll be really good to be at home, it feels like it’s been an age without a game there due to how the fixtures have worked out!

“But look, it’s a game of football, it’s at home, we’ll have great support, so I'm looking forward to it."

Austin has already signed eight players, while defender Jono Richardson has re-joined Sheppey as player-assistant manager, but the Town manager, who only took charge last month, is still looking to add to his squad.

When asked if he was now happier with what he’s got at his disposal, he replied: “Yeah of course. With the people that have come, we’re absolutely delighted that they have come in.

“Obviously we’ve not really had a massive opportunity to work with them yet - and a lot of them being cup-tied on Tuesday [as they lost at Folkestone] didn’t help - but we are only two weeks into being in charge.

“So we have got to give ourselves a realistic amount of time. In sort of four weeks’ time, hopefully, there will be a squad there that we can start to work with.”

Austin has brought in striker Frankie Sawyer and defender Matt Parsons among his plethora of new recruits and, while he has the club’s all-time record appearance-maker Matt Bourne still in his ranks, he's eager to add a few more wise heads.

He said: “I think we are lacking a bit of experience in the squad and that’s something that I’ve been working hard at rectifying in the last week.

“It’s not easy signing people, it’s not easy signing good players.

“Coming into the club so late, it’s tough but, hopefully, there'll be positive news, coming into this Saturday.”

Overall, Faversham have conceded 16 goals in four matches since Austin took charge, following up a 6-1 league loss at Whitehawk last weekend with a 5-0 defeat to Folkestone at Cheriton Road in midweek.

“It’s a tough one to take again, with the amount of goals that we’ve conceded,” the ex-Folkestone frontman reflected as he returned to his old club.

“But there were some real positives out of it which is what we have got to take into the more realistic games, like the league game on Saturday. We’ve not had an opportunity to work on things in pre-season games, and trial things, so we’ve tried to do things as best we can.

“But we’ll take the positives out of the performances - individually and, in moments, as a team. Actually, I’m really looking forward to taking that into Saturday.”

It was a second Velocity Cup clash at Faversham for Austin - having started their reign with a 2-1 victory at Ramsgate - and they’ve been vital matches to allow his new-look management team to assess the squad.

Austin said: “I’m one of these people that wants to win every game of football.

“But we have to be realistic of where we are and the job that we’ve got on hand of when we took it over and utilise certain situations when we can.”

Since joining, Sawyers and Parsons, back for a second spell with the club, are yet to feature.