Andy Hessenthaler admits it is starting to look as if his players are developing a fear of playing at home.

Dover are the National League’s outstanding performers on the road, winning six of their seven games so far.

However it is a different story at Crabble, where they have taken just five points from a possible 21.

Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to FC Halifax was already their fourth of the season at home and boss Hessenthaler admits the run is causing him concern.

He said: “We just don’t get going (at home). It’s almost, do we start playing a totally different team at home than we do away from home?

“We look at shapes, we look at players and it’s almost like we’re scared to play at home a little bit. You’ve got to come out of the blocks at home.

“We’ve got to find a solution if we’re going to finish where we want to finish and we’ve got to change that home form.

“I just don’t know why. We haven’t told them to sit back, we’ve got to take the game to the opposition.

“I don’t know what goes through their minds. Is it a case of ‘We haven’t done well at home, we don’t want to concede, we don’t want to be too open?’. But we still conceded (after 11 minutes against Halifax).

“If we’ re going to get anywhere this season we’ve got to change the home form.”

Hessenthaler was at a loss to explain why his side played so poorly against FC Halifax, particularly knowing they could have gone third with a win.

He added: “We looked scared first half, we didn’t take on what we talked about before the game. How can you not go into this game with lots of confidence?

“You’ve just gone to Hartlepool and Maidenhead and won. How can they not have confidence after what we’ve just achieved on our travels?

“Maybe I’ve got to get a psychologist in and have a chat with him and see if we can get in their heads a bit.”

• Reason getting there
• Home form needs to change

Whites are back at Crabble on Saturday when they host Notts County – a game as big as any they will face this season.

Hessenthaler said: “Notts County are probably the biggest club in the division and they’ve turned their form around

“They’ve got a fantastic manager in Neal Ardley, who I know really well, and teams will come and say ‘Just start the game right at Dover and you’ll beat them’.

“But that’s what we say when we go to Hartlepool, Maidenhead, Chesterfield and Sutton. We say ‘Look, we’re the away team, the pressure’s all on them’.

“It was disappointing on Saturday but we’ve got to be careful we don’t get too carried away with the situation.

“The boys will stick together and I’m sure we will get that off our backs sooner rather than later and go on a run.”

Injured trio Kevin Lokko, Josh Passley and Oscar Gobern have only a 50/50 chance of being fit for the County game while Nassim L’Ghoul could be pushing for a start after impressing as a substitute against FC Halifax

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