John Embery says his Herne Bay players need to learn to stay focused for every game.

Bay were on a good run with three wins in four before a 3-1 defeat at Phoenix Sports last weekend.

They face a tough schedule in the coming weeks to catch up on matches postponed by the bad weather and will be looking to push themselves up the Bostik South table, starting on Thursday away to South Park.

Joint-boss Embery said: “We have to learn that if we are not focused, anyone can beat us and we must not take our foot off the pedal.

“We are disappointed with the performance against Phoenix as we looked to push on up the table.

“They went into it a bit oversure of themselves and they were not focused. We had been approaching things with the right attitude in recent weeks but it was a bit too casual.”

Bay went 3-0 down at Phoenix before Junior efosa Aikhionbare’s consolation.

It was not the sort of performance the management team had become used to in recent weeks.

Embery said: “We gave away poor goals as they only had three shots. We did not seem switched on as much right from the warm-up and thought it was going to be too easy.

“We started slowly and it cost us an early goal. From then on we controlled the game and should have had a blatant penalty.

“We then missed a lot of chances and if we had scored another, we would have
won.”

Bay faced the prospect of playing four games in the space of a week but their match at Molesey on Tuesday was called off again because of the weather.

After South Park, Bay are at home to Whyteleafe on Saturday.

Embery added: “I would have rather Thursday’s game (against South Park) had been called off as then it would have given us more time to prepare for the weekend but we will take what we can.

“We were disappointed it was called off against Molesey because it would have been a good chance to get three points and get back to winning ways.

“We would rather points on the board than games in hand but it can give you extra momentum and motivation.”