Ebbsfleet defender Tom Dallison insists they can’t afford to dwell on their poor start to the season.

The Fleet have just one National League win to their name having already played a quarter of the campaign.

They’ll aim to kickstart their season at home to Rochdale this Saturday (3pm) and victory will also help Dallison’s Sunday morning turn that little bit sweeter at home.

“People come here and pay their hard-earned money to see Ebbsfleet win games,” said Dallison.

“Obviously, we have families, some of us have young kids and it’s not nice to wake up on a Sunday morning.

“I know, my little boy is four-years-old and asks ‘daddy, what was the score?’. It’s not nice, it does hurt and there’s no hiding that you take it home.

“There’s no time to get down in the dumps, there’s another opportunity to go and get three points on Saturday.

“Let’s be frank, we’re not even halfway through the season yet and we definitely aren’t cut adrift at all. There’s enough experience in the building to know that and to know how quickly the tide can turn.

“The gaffer touched on it, you can either be performance-happy or result-happy. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been instances this season where we’ve been performance-happy but without a result you can’t be happy overall.

“So, it’s about churning out good performances and getting what you deserve from games. Ultimately that comes from being clinical in both boxes for me.”

It’s not the first time that Dallison or some of his team-mates have been in this position.

The former Brighton youngster has no shortage of experience to draw on after spells in League 2 at Crawley and Colchester.

“I think if you’ve been playing the game for 10 or 11 years at a professional level and not gone through a spell of hardship and conceding goals that are soft, you’ve been very lucky or been part of a very good team consistently over a long period of time which is not a common thing,” he stated.

“There’s a lot of bodies in the changing room that have been through this before, I’ve been through it myself and have come out the other side.

“I think we know what it takes, the core group knows what it takes to turn the tide, which is good, and we’ve got a really good management team who are working hard behind the scenes.

“We get great detail going into games, you can see that from our set-up on Saturday. I felt like we were hard to break down in the first half and how well we were set up and hard to break down was clear to see.”

As for the goals the Fleet have been conceded, as a no-nonsense defender Dallison doesn’t like them being described as “softness” but admits there’s been too many cheap giveaways.

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“I really hate the word softness, no offence, but it’s really tough to take that as a defender,” he stated.

“But, yes, it probably is. They’re not opening us up, we’re not conceding 30-yard screamers, we’re conceding goals where people run off people’s shoulders.

“There’s a lot of disappointed heads in the changing room but that’s a positive thing. The lads know that losing games isn’t acceptable, not necessarily in the manner we’re losing them, but the goals we’re conceding are not good goals that teams have scored against us, they’re really preventable goals.

“We’ve got a good core group, a lot of experience within the squad and we can pick each other up, get back on the training pitch and put things right going into Rochdale now.”

There’s no hiding place in the National League, and if results are not what the centre-back expected, the standard is exactly what Dallison anticipated after dropping out of the Football League.

“There were numerous amounts of things that made me take the decision,” explained Dallison, reflecting on joining the Fleet.

“Ebbsfleet is a great club in terms of the set-up, the players, as we’ve got a really good squad. There’s no hiding away from that, whether the players are underperforming this season or not. I think there’s a lot of experience in the team and players who have had really good careers.

“That was definitely a big thing for me. I signed late in pre-season and I know the squad was near enough made up by the time I signed. I looked at it and thought ‘that’s a bit of me’ to be honest with you.

“It’s a club with a lot of ambition and the National League now is really competitive. I’ve played in League 2 for most of my career and now the first time stepping into the National League, the likes of Oldham, Rochdale and Forest Green have been in League 2 recently and it almost does feel like a League 3.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful to players in League 2, as that is a step above, but at this level there’s no hiding away from the fact that, financially, the National League has grown.

“There’s a lot of big-hitters in this league now and ambitious clubs, probably more so than I was as a 17 or 18-year-old going on loan to Dartford and Braintree. It’s evolved a lot and hopefully that will only keep growing.”