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Sam Corne is determined to put things right when Maidstone play big-spending Solihull Moors.
United go into Saturday’s game at the Gallagher Stadium reeling after a 4-1 defeat at struggling Gateshead last weekend.
The visitors are said to have one of the biggest budgets in the National League but Maidstone have a point to prove.
Midfielder Corne said: “This is one of my pet peeves, when people try and write us off before we’ve even played teams.
“Listen, don’t get me wrong, they’ve got a big budget and they might have better individuals and personnel.
“But, at the end of the day, it’s a game of football and if you win your individual battles the likelihood of you winning the game is a lot higher. We’re looking forward to it, we want to try and move on from Gateshead and get a result.
“I think it fires you up even more when you’ve had a game like that.
“We don’t like being down in the dumps, we don’t like losing.
“If we can rectify that and get on a little winning run or at least a run where we aren’t losing, that will put us in good stead moving forward.”
Corne was puzzled by Maidstone’s performance at Gateshead, particularly after back-to-back wins over Torquay and Aldershot over the Bank Holiday weekend.
“We know as a collective and individuals, we weren’t at the races,” he said.
“We apologise to the travelling fans who backed us, we know we can do better and we’ll look to do that against Solihull.
“There’s no excuses. We travelled up the day before to give ourselves the best opportunity to do well but, from the get-go, we weren’t at it.
“Everyone’s had a good night’s kip and a good pre-match, it should have put us in good stead but clearly not.
“It’s disappointing but we’ve got to move forward, we can’t dwell too much.
“We had an exceptional season last year but that’s been and gone. We have to kick on in this league now.
“We’re playing against better sides but we’ve got to trust in our own ability and trust the players to do their jobs.
“Sometimes we’re not going to be at it but we’ve got to be defensively better because we’ve conceded too many goals as a whole.
“If we can do that, then we’ll create opportunities, like we did in the previous two games.
“We all want to win, we’ve all got the same ambition, it’s just a case of turning that ambition into results.
“I’m enjoying the league as an individual. It’s where we thrive to be at.
“The teams we play against, they’re going to be tougher, you’re going to go to difficult places but these are the things you want, you don’t want to be playing at the lower levels.
“We’ve got to improve as a collective and do our thing individually to utilise the best of our abilities.”