Maidstone will be in for extra training on Monday after their 4-1 defeat at Gateshead.

Manager Hakan Hayrettin has called the squad in to go through events in the north east yesterday, a step he also took after United lost 5-0 at Wrexham a fortnight ago.

And there’s no complaints from the players after an afternoon Hayrettin said went “badly wrong”.

“Gaffer’s got us in Monday and we’ve got to prep for next week,” said midfielder Sam Corne.

“Listen, that’s our job, we weren’t at the races, we need to be better.

“We can utilise that extra day, which is reasonable, we’ve got to do that.”

Back-to-back wins over Torquay and Aldershot saw Maidstone travel to Tyneside in good shape.

But a Gateshead side searching for their first win punished mistakes and were much better than a Stones outfit who looked strangely out of sorts.

The hosts struck twice in either half - and should have had more - before Joe Ellul’s 87th-minute header for the visitors.

“It’s one step forward, two steps back at the moment,” said Hayrettin, whose side have dropped a place to 11th in the National League.

“We can’t get any consistency in our game and obviously we’ve had a look at Gateshead and the way they play.

“They play some good stuff, we didn’t really deal with any of their good play.

“In fact, we let ourselves down in the first half and that’s where the damage was done.

• Report: Gateshead 4-1 Maidstone

“But it’s a learning curve and we’re going to have to pick ourselves up and go again.

“Combinations and partnerships are not working, we’ll have to keep working hard to turn it around because we can see that we can win games and we know how to win.

"But when it goes wrong it sometimes goes badly wrong and today was one of those days where it went badly wrong.

“It’s one step forward, two steps back at the moment but it’s not always going to be like that, it’s a learning curve and we’ll have to learn quick.

“It could have been more but I’m not going to over-dwell on it because I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.

“I think the right thing for me to do now is make sure we come in and work hard, which we will.”

Maidstone had a lengthy discussion in the dressing room after their second long-distance away game this season went the same way as the first.

Hayrettin again felt for the travelling fans, with 108 making the 630-mile round trip.

“We were just honest in there because we are honest, aren’t we?” said the Stones boss.

“We’ve got people coming up here to watch the game and we’ve got to do better as a group.

“We dealt with what happened at Wrexham and won two games back-to-back but, football being football, you’re going to have days like this.

“It just wasn’t right. We worked on certain things and we didn’t follow it through to the plan.”