Manager Danny Searle has urged Ebbsfleet’s fans to stick by the side as they look to get their campaign going.

They are hoping it will be third time lucky tonight (7.45pm) when they take on newly-promoted National League club Yeovil.

Searle is well aware his troops are not exempt from flak - having started the season with consecutive losses - but is realistic about what their goals should be this season.

He said: “It’s not about not criticising us.

“At the end of the day, if we don’t do things properly or someone isn’t running around properly or I get something wrong, in football, you get criticised. But we just need to stick together.

“We’re a club that survived on the last day of the season last year. That’s a bit of a reality check for us.

“We were never going to go from being a team that survived on the last day to being a team who are favourites to win the league.

Report: Ebbsfleet 1-2 Barnet

Searle: Results will come if we keep improving

“We just need to keep working hard on the training pitch, we need to stay together as a group of players and a group of staff and as a club. Within that, you have the supporters.

“Our main focus has always been that we need to be better than we were last year.”

Games against much-fancied Gateshead and Barnet, as well as the 330-mile round midweek trip to Huish Park, is far from the ideal start for the Fleet.

“The fixtures aren’t really kind to us all season if you look at some of the back-to-back away fixtures we have got Saturday-Tuesday,” Searle suggested.

“It’s a bit like ‘Wow, someone really didn’t like us’ - regardless of how that’s made. But it’s a tough league and we just have to take that on the chin.

“Regardless of whether you’re at the top of the league, bottom of the league or middle of the table, every week is a fight.

“We just have to keep fighting because we know the quality is in the dressing room and that will come through so we just have to stand up and fight.

“When the fans left the stadium at Gateshead, we didn’t allow them to leave, feeling proud of what we put on the pitch.

“Was it fantastic on Saturday? No.

“But there should be a bit more pride in what we have tried to do.”

The Fleet will need to decide whether to recall Dominic Poleon from the start in Somerset.

Striker Poleon came off the substitutes’ bench at half-time against Barnet and capped an encouraging performance with his stoppage-time consolation penalty.