More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
John Still accused Maidstone of being "completely and totally unprofessional" in their defeat at Wealdstone.
United suffered their first loss in six games at the National League South leaders, going down 2-1 at Grosvenor Vale.
Head of football Still said his side’s application was non-existent, adding it felt as though they had screwed up their instructions and thrown them in the bin.
Wealdstone’s opener, which saw Billy Clifford score direct from a corner, summed it all up for the Stones boss.
He said: “We gave a shocking goal away. Sam Corne’s let a ball go past him in the box because he thought he heard a call.
“I’ve never known anyone let a ball go past them in the box and I think that then set the tone a little bit for a mistake-ridden first half.
“Sam’s in that near-post area to stop the ball going past him and he thought he heard a call and let it go.
“No one else heard a call, but whether he had a call or not, clear it and argue about it afterwards.”
Maidstone conceded a second before the break and Wealdstone had further chances in the second half before Dan Wishart gave the visitors late hope.
They could have snatched a draw at the death but it would have been an undeserved point.
Still said: “We got beat, we deserved to get beat and I think the main reason we got beat is the application into the jobs of each individual player was non-existent.
“Most of the stuff we’ve tried to do since we brought the new group of players in is give them all a job to do, this is your job, the position requires this job, this job, and we’d made progress with it gradually, and it looked like today that they’d picked up the bit of paper and screwed it up and threw it in the bin.”
Maidstone were missing George Elokobi (hamstring) and also lost Corne to injury during the second half but Still wasn’t making excuses.
He added: “I really believe this, the best teams can win when they don’t play well and that’s the reason why, because everyone knows their job, everyone knows what’s required, everyone knows what it is to win a game.
“But on this performance here we didn’t have the other things, other than ability, to try and win a game.
“We could have come off 2-2 and they would have been patting themselves on the back but we wouldn’t because you can’t be professional Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“You’re professional or you’re not. I have a saying - you can’t be a little bit pregnant. I’ve said it for years. You are or you’re not.
“And you are professional or you’re not and today we were totally unprofessional throughout the team.
“Nothing to do with George not playing, nothing to do with Sam coming off, we were completely and totally unprofessional and if I look at it, we have to take responsibility for that as well because that’s our job to make sure they are.
“We give them more than enough information, more than enough work, more than enough individual work, more than enough teamwork but they didn’t do it so we’ve got to look at ourselves as well.”
It was always going to be a challenge facing a Wealdstone side who’d won five games in a row but Maidstone didn’t help themselves.
Still said: “Did I expect us to play great? I don’t know really but I expect us to be organised, disciplined and I thought we had a 15-minute spell after about 20 minutes where we were unorganised.
“I looked at things we were doing and I couldn’t understand some of them because we work so hard with it and I keep on to people, when things are going wrong don’t panic, stay on the path you’re on, just stay on it, work hard at it and normally you can get it to come back.
“If you play games and everyone does their job, everyone’s on it and you get beat, that’s football, we all get beat.
“But don’t get beat because of what you’ve done, get beat because of what they’ve done.”
