Ebbsfleet manager Dennis Kutrieb insists that there’s enough quality in his squad without rushing into the transfer market.

The Fleet suffered their seventh defeat in nine games with a 4-0 humbling at rivals Dartford on New Year’s Day.

It was a fourth straight National League South reverse for Ebbsfleet, who changed style for the first time under Kutrieb, trying to match Dartford’s direct methods.

It didn’t work on the day with key moments in the game going against them, but Kutrieb doesn’t believe wholesale changes are the answer, either.

“We didn’t score a goal but I can’t change that at the moment because I can’t go on the pitch and put it in the back of the net,” said the Fleet boss, who has Elliott Romain back from his loan at Hemel Hempstead this week.

“We need to make sure that we keep believing together as a team. We had enough chances to score goals again and we’re not taking them at the moment.

“I can’t say it’s not enough quality as that would not be true, I could stand here and say we need new strikers as we don’t have enough quality.

“That’s not the case, we have enough quality in the squad to score goals because we’ve done it already this season but at the moment we’ve scored one in four games and that’s not good enough.

“We can’t rely on saying it’s unlucky at the moment and it will come, we need to work harder and we need to create more. When you don’t score from five chances, you need to create 10 chances.

“But it’s not easy with a drop in confidence so we need to pick them up, we need to regroup and make sure everyone can remember what we have done in a good way. Then we can come out of it together.”

Ebbsfleet remain well placed, despite dropping to third in the table, with games in hand on leaders Dartford and second-placed Havant.

Having taken 48 points from their first 23 games, a repeat performance in the second half of the campaign would surely be enough to win the title.

But they need to halt their slump in form quickly, starting with this Saturday’s home game against lowly Weymouth (3pm).

“It might be on Saturday or a week Saturday, we just need to stick together,” added Kutrieb.

“We have 15 wins already, it’s now halfway in the season and if we get another 15 wins then we’ll be fine, 100% and we don’t need to be worried then.

“But, for now, you have to be worried because if you lose four on the bounce you have to watch everywhere and think about many different things.

“If we find the right solutions now then we’ll be fine to bounce back. It might not be this Saturday but we will be back as soon as we get the first win or even score the first goal, it will give us the confidence back that we are lacking at the moment.”

The second defeat to Dartford was the first time that Kutrieb’s side have gone away from his footballing philosophy. Their patient approach and playing out from the back was replaced by a direct method more akin to Darts.

“I’m never too proud to change something or to think that this is the right way and you can’t do it differently,” said Kutrieb.

“We could see what they do and they just kick the ball long anyway so we wanted to match it up.

“I could see for the game that, with a drop in confidence, we might play a bit more direct as we know their back four is slow so we could go behind them.”