Jake Leberl believes Dover’s youngsters will only benefit from their first-team exposure this season.

Another difficult campaign for the Whites looks set to end in relegation from National League South.

They’re 16 points from safety with 10 games to play after losing 1-0 at home to Maidstone on Saturday.

It was a sixth straight loss for Dover, who have won only three league games all season.

The average age of their team against the Stones was just 22, with Dontai Stewart their oldest player at 25.

But rather than being scarred by Dover’s struggles, boss Leberl feels the experience of regular football at Step 2 will aid his young players’ development as he builds a side with a strong local flavour.

“It’s only going to help them,” said Leberl.

“And let’s be honest, where else are boys going to get opportunities to play at this level?

“Which other clubs are playing as young a team as we are?

“I want to go with younger boys, I want to go with more local boys if we can.

“That’s not to say that’s all we’re going to do.

“We’ll try and recruit the best boy for the position no matter where he lives but ideally we want players to play for the club that feel connected to the club and want to be part of the club.

“Where we are geographically, it’s difficult to attract players - it always has been - and so we’ve just got to keep going, try and get the lads to stay here that are doing well for us and look forward to next season.

“You only have to look at other clubs in the area to see how hard is to attract players.

“Margate have been struggling for a while and this club’s been struggling for a while.

“It’s different if you can throw a load of money at them but there’s not a load of money to throw at people.

“We’ve got a reasonable budget, there’s no issues there, it’s just trying to attract the right players to come and want to be here for the right reasons.”

Dover make the long trip to Weston on Saturday (3pm) and visit fellow strugglers Eastbourne on Tuesday (7.45pm).

Whites won’t give up on finishing the season with a flourish.

The commitment has been there and that’s the minimum requirement asked by Leberl.

He said: “We’ve just got to keep going, as difficult as it is, and concentrate on trying to pick up points.

“We’ve been on a bad run and within that run the Dartford and Chippenham games were really frustrating in terms of not picking up anything.

“People say our performances deserved something, and they did, but we were naive in both games.

“There’s small margins in football between winning and losing.

“I’ve said to the boys I’ve got no problem with you making mistakes but what you can’t do is make the same mistake.

“There’s so many instances that can happen in football.

“We try and use our experience to guide the boys and then something else comes up.

“Small margins cost you points and then obviously there’s been some very good teams we’ve come up against.

“I thought St Albans were very good down here first half - we couldn’t get near them - and I thought Tonbridge first half were very good.

“We’ve put in a consistent shift against Maidstone, we just didn’t quite have enough to get anything out of it.”