Dover boss Chris Kinnear is not courting sympathy after his side lost at 3-1 at Aldershot on Tuesday night – a third defeat in four Vanarama Conference games.

The straight-talking Kinnear said: “It’s no good feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve all got to man up and get on with it.

“It’s unhealthy wallowing in self-pity and thinking about what might have been. We lost – it’s that simple and nothing can be done to change that result.”

While he is looking to the future, Kinnear did reflect on the goals his side conceded at Aldershot.

He said: “They were bad goals to give away, three stupid goals and that made the defeat even more annoying.”

Whites enjoyed a stunning 13-game unbeaten league run before a 1-0 loss at Lincoln on January 31 and Kinnear said that tremendous effort was now making his side a prized scalp in non-league’s top-flight.

He said: “When we entered the league this season, there were people saying we’d be battling relegation and we’d be regarded as minnows in a big pond.

“But that unbeaten run and our FA Cup and FA Trophy success has proved those doubters wrong, well wrong.

“We’ve earned plenty of respect and we’ve been given it but we are not making that respect pay of late.

“Everyone wants to beat us now and the Aldershot lads said that to me after the game. They said playing us was a massive game and they lifted for it.

“That means we all know that we’ve got to make sure we work harder, much harder, than who we are playing against, if we are to get back winning.”

Kinnear’s side host the side which ended the unbeaten league run, Lincoln, on Saturday (3pm).

Read the full story in the Mercury