Jay Saunders has told Maidstone fans not to expect too much from Alex Flisher just yet.

Winger Flisher scored his first goal since returning from a nine-month lay-off as United beat St Albans 1-0 at the Gallagher Stadium on Saturday.

He drilled home Jack Paxman’s backheel four minutes after coming off the bench to secure a fifth win in a row in National League South.

Manager Saunders said: “As I said in interviews a few weeks back, if we had him back at Christmas I’d have been happy.

“We’ve got him back earlier. He’s not there fitness-wise, it is going to take time and we can’t now he’s scored a goal get too excited.

“We’ll keep building him up and trying to work on his fitness and hopefully we’ll get him there.

“I was saying on the bench to the new lads how many times I’ve seen him hit that bottom corner.

“He gets in those positions and he seems to have a great finish on him. It makes all that work he’s done worthwhile.”

League strugglers St Albans made life difficult, with Saunders impressed at his side’s ability to finally break down stubborn opponents.

He said: “It’s definitely not the best we’ve played in the last few weeks but the boys kept going.

“I said at half-time it’s a compliment to us that teams are coming here and trying to frustrate us and hit us on the break.

“That’s what they did and at times they broke well but everything they had was kind of from distance.

“The only thing I would say is we kind of went a little bit long.

“At times we needed to stretch it and try and get the ball in behind them a little bit more but we went through a spell where we kept doing it rather than shortening it up.

“If you look at the bit of quality where we’ve had the ball, Paxman’s got it to Flish and it’s a good finish.”