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Neil Cugley has challenged some of his players to up their game before the start of the season.
There are shirts up for grabs at Folkestone but Cugley hasn’t seen enough from those coming off the bench in pre-season.
Invicta have three more games before kicking off their Isthmian Premier campaign at home to Worthing on August 10 and the gauntlet has been thrown down.
Cugley said: “I still need a couple of players to really do well.
“I’m still waiting for them to show me they should be in the team and that’s been disappointing.
“Sometimes pre-season drags on but in some ways I’m glad we’ve got three or four games for these players to show, especially in the final third, they’ve got something about them to be selected.”
Folkestone are still hoping to agree a deal with forward Ira Jackson, who played the full 90 minutes in the 3-2 defeat to Hythe at the weekend.
Cugley said: “Dover have told him they’re not going to take him and he did well for us.
“He’s always said he’ll sign if he didn’t go to Dover so we expect him to be there. Charlie Dickens is still on trial too and I’ll keep looking to see how he does.
“We’re not a rich club. We try to put the money into the team and we’ll have a good squad but it won’t be big. We travel to games in cars, I got my mate to buy the kit and all of our admin work gets done for nothing.
“You try to keep the costs down in other ways so hopefully you can put a team out which can be competitive at this level.”
Jerson Dos Santos and Alfie Paxman scored for Folkestone on Saturday.
Cugley said: “It changed at half-time when I took my more experienced players off. Their experienced players took over.
“In the first half we ran it and they only had one shot and didn’t cause us any problems but then Draycott, Everitt, Newman and Santos all came off, as they do in pre-season, and we lost our way a bit.
“Those four are good talkers on the pitch and Santos runs the frontline so in a normal game, I would have expected to carry on and win the game with the experience we had on the park.
“But in pre-season you’ve got to change it, otherwise what’s the point of having the friendlies?”
Folkestone, who lost 3-2 at Deal on Monday night with Paxman scoring twice, are at home to Whitstable on Saturday.
