Jay Saunders felt a second 4-0 defeat in five days was harsh on Maidstone.

The Stones wound up heavily beaten at Tranmere on Saturday but, unlike the Boreham Wood loss, manager Saunders liked what he saw for much of the match.

Early goals from James Norwood and Andy Cook left them chasing it but Maidstone created decent chances before being picked off late on at Prenton Park.

Defeat sees United drop to 10th place in the National League, still two points better off than Rovers, but now with a negative goal difference.

Saunders said: “As crazy as it sounds, for large parts of the game I was actually quite pleased with our performance.

“I think goals change games and we’ve given them two goals at the beginning of the game.

“Once you do that, coming to places like this you’re always up against it because the game pushes on, you’ve got to go for it and leave yourselves open and they’ve scored two at the end.

“For large parts of it we played some good stuff and created some great chances.

“When we went 2-0 down Delano Sam-Yorke goes through one-on-one, Zavon Hines goes through one-on-one and the difference today was their two up front, Cook and Norwood, got chances and took them.

“They’re a very good pair. We went through stuff on Thursday to try and stop them but it hasn’t worked.

“You look at the first two goals, they’re poor.

“The first one, Norwood shouldn’t really be able to get across our two centre-halves at the near post.

“The second goal, Alex Finney’s got to be a little bit tighter to Cook, he allows him to get his shot off and it kills you, but we responded quite well to that.

“I thought we controlled possession quite well at times in the first half and the second half but we just couldn’t take our chances today and that’s the difference.

“I don’t want to keep saying it but you have to come to places like this and still be in the game and if we take one of those chances first half then you still are but as the game goes on you’ve got to chase it at some point.”

Read the match report from Maidstone's 4-0 defeat at Tranmere