Ebbsfleet boss Dennis Kutrieb wants his team to learn from their defeats.

The Fleet suffered a setback in the National League South title race after losing at home to Eastbourne on Tuesday night – just their second reverse in the league this season.

“You should always learn from defeats, you can learn from wins as well, but when you’ve been beaten by Eastbourne twice you should learn from it and where we can do better,” said Kutrieb.

“We need to defend better, if you can’t defend together as a team then the opponent can score and on the other side if you don’t put your chances away then you have a result like that.

“We will stick together, it’s a long season. We have 15 wins and we need to work harder. Eastbourne caused us some problems, we were not able to score even with some clear-cut chances.

“We’ll get ready for Cheshunt (next Tuesday) and then two games against Dartford. It’s a long season to go, nothing has happened today but I wanted a better result than what we got.”

Eastbourne also won at Ebbsfleet in the FA Trophy last week.

They provided stubborn opponents again in the league clash, although – once again – the Fleet had enough chances to have won the game.

“I’m not surprised as we had them in the FA Trophy a few weeks ago and they beat us then as well,” said Kutrieb.

“If you’re not able to put the ball over the line, there were enough chances especially in the second half, then you can’t win games.

“I said exactly the same after the FA Trophy, obviously we wanted to have a different result.

“We don’t need to blame the referee. Funnily enough I was smiling when I saw the England game as it’s not just National League South where the referees are really bad but today was again like the icing on the cake.

“Everything (went) against us but that’s football, we have to get on with it and we don’t need to blame the referee. We will learn from it and make it better next week.

• Report: Ebbsfleet 0-2 Eastbourne

“When a few key players are missing it’s not like we definitely win our games. A little bit of quality was missing in certain areas but that’s why we have a big squad.”