Dartford boss Alan Dowson has admitted their two festive derbies with Welling are now must-win games for him.

KentOnline understands Dowson retains the support of the Dartford board but many fans left early during Saturday’s 3-0 home loss to St Albans and boos greeted the final whistle from those that remained in the ground.

While Dartford sit six points outside the play-off places, they are the same distance away from the relegation zone and are 18th in the table. The St Albans defeat followed a 4-0 humbling at Tonbridge seven days earlier.

Dowson knows his team have to deliver against Welling, who knocked them out of the FA Cup earlier this season as well.

“Obviously, it’s big for me, if people look at it then I’m going down the table a bit,” admitted Dowson.

“The honest truth is we can’t not get results forever, we can’t get beat by fours and threes and keep losing.

“Of course, there’s going to be a few shouts about that, I respect that and understand that, and I feel sorry for people. They’ve paid good money to watch and it doesn’t look good on me. So, yes, I think I need to win these two games as well.

“I think everybody knows how big they are now, for me and for them. I’m not daft. If you concede four and a three and you haven’t scored a goal it doesn’t look good reading.

“I’m not daft on that and it’s up to me and the players to pick it up and crack on, that’s what we’ve got to do. It’s just disappointing to concede these goals.”

It was a fairly even contest against St Albans until the visitors opened the scoring with 20 minutes left.

Dartford’s heads seemed to drop at that stage and the visitors quickly added a second before scoring a stunning third goal in stoppage time.

“I felt whoever got the first goal would win the game and it was them,” said Dowson.

“We gave some sloppy goals away but I thought we were massively in the game until then.

“If we could have converted one of them chances we might have had half a chance. We’ve got to move forward to two massive games, Kent derbies and that’s exactly what we will do.

“We’ve got to go through the pain barrier if you like and try to come out the other side.

“We’re not far off and that’s what we’ve got to believe. But it’s down to us. We’ve got a couple of games coming up, we’ve got to be up for them and make sure we win them.

“Yes, you’re going to get ‘Dowson this and Dowson that’ but if you’re losing games three and four of course you’re going to get stick. I’m not going anywhere. In a year and a half I haven’t done too bad, we’ve finished second and we’re six points off the play-offs. We just need to make sure we get on a run.”

Report: Dartford 0-3 St Albans

Dowson was close to bringing in two new faces to boost his squad in the week.

But any incoming deals are now expected to have to wait until January to come to fruition.

“We had a couple,” added the Darts boss. “I had a midfielder from Oxford who has been here before but he’s going to be another week away, and we thought we’d have him.

“I had a lad from Barnet who was signing on Friday but was then pulled away at the last minute by an agent because he might want to go full-time still. We’ve been a tad unlucky but we’ll keep working very hard at it.”

The Darts boss also revealed why he agreed to let defender Baris Altintop depart having arrived at the club from Braintree in the summer, and confirmed Archie Woods has returned to West Ham after his half-season loan.

“Baris came to see us and said it’s taken a long time to travel down to games,” said Dowson. “Good luck to him and we move forward.

“Has it worked out for anybody at this minute? It hasn’t. He lives in Sudbury so Braintree is closer to where he is from and I think the travelling was affecting him on the pitch and probably him as a person.

“I don’t have any problems with it, I wish him well and hope he does alright there.”