George Elokobi vowed to take care of Raphe Brown after a red card ruled him out of Maidstone’s FA Cup tie at Ipswich.

Defender Brown, a half-time substitute, was sent off after picking up two bookings in a 2-1 defeat at Slough yesterday.

He can face Braintree on Tuesday night but will serve a one-match ban at Portman Road next weekend.

Brown previously faced missing the Stones’ third-round tie against Stevenage after he was sent off at Tonbridge but his second yellow that day was overturned on grounds of mistaken identity.

There will be no reprieve this time and you could only feel for Brown as he made his way off after overstretching in his attempts to beat Slavi Spasov to the ball.

“I’m really, really disappointed for him,” said Stones boss Elokobi.

“He’s an honest lad and we have to ensure we look after him.

“These things do happen. He wasn’t trying to hurt the player, he was just trying to put the ball in behind.

“I don’t think the pass to him was good enough - it left him short.

“We have to put our arms around him. He’ll be back.

“He has to put this behind him. It’s a lesson and he’ll learn from it. We can’t change it. It’s happened. We have to move on.”

Elokobi felt the FA Cup was on his players’ minds at Slough.

They were punished for a slow start as Josh Jackman put the Rebels in front.

And while debutant Mo Faal levelled from the penalty spot, Johnny Goddard scored the winner as Maidstone suffered back-to-back league defeats.

“We are a National League South side and what we’re doing at the minute, with the FA Cup run, it’s going to be a little bit of a distraction, but no excuses,” said Elokobi, whose side remain fourth.

“The players that went out there, did they lose on purpose? No, not by any means.

“They gave their best today but our best wasn’t good enough.

“We’ve got to pick them up and dust ourselves off and look forward to Braintree on Tuesday.”

He added: “There’s a lot of media attention on us, our players are human and, of course, they’re going to have one eye on next week.

“My job as a manager is to try and make sure we remind them the league is our bread and butter.

“I’m doing that but again we have to make sure we try to do the basics and make sure we are resilient in moments of the game.

“We knew Slough were going to come at us, we knew this was a difficult place to come and get a result and we started the game on the back foot by not dealing with a cross in the box.

“We don’t defend like that so we have to get back to basics and it’s my job to fix it, which I will.”

Elokobi said in-form striker Matt Rush was taken off at half-time due to a dead leg.