Sheppey manager Ernie Batten fears key man Jacob Lambert could miss the rest of the season.

Midfielder Lambert went off with a knee injury during the first half of the Ites’ 3-2 home defeat by Three Bridges on Saturday.

He joins a lengthy injury list that includes the likes of Danny Leonard (hamstring) and Dan Carr (also knee).

“Jacob’s gone off with a suspected tear in his knee, so he could be out for the season,” said Batten, speaking shortly after full-time.

“He’s on crutches at the moment, so he’s going to need a scan on that. It’s a huge blow.”

Sheppey, back in action two days on from a 4-0 derby defeat at Sittingbourne, dropped a place to seventh in Isthmian South East after a fourth consecutive loss.

A young home side trailed at the break and while Victor Aiye levelled, the visitors established a 3-1 lead before Dan Bradshaw replied in the last five minutes.

“When you’re losing key players and have to shuffle your back four constantly, it’s very difficult,” said Batten.

“Everyone knows you need a settled spine of the team.

“If you’re conceding too many goals, it’s very hard to win football matches, so that’s what we’ve suffered from a little bit.

“I wouldn’t want to criticise our boys too much because I think they are working hard.

“We’ve got a lot of youngsters in the side now - I think the average age of the side today was just under 20.

“So there’s a lot of youngsters that are learning the game, they made a few fundamental errors today which cost us.

“But I wouldn’t fault the effort or the commitment of the side, and on today’s performance, I thought we were OK in parts.

“I thought we could have put them under a bit more pressure, put more balls into the box, and I thought we could have got forward in numbers a bit better.

“We seemed a bit reluctant to push up from the back, we sat a bit too deep.

“I did ask them at half-time to do that but again with younger players it’s learning that they’ve got to all come up together, otherwise one stays and then they get caught over the top.

“It can be a multitude of things but at the end of the day we’ve got beat because we conceded three goals and we conceded four against Sittingbourne and three at Deal and when you do that, it’s very difficult to win football matches.

“There’s been various reasons for that but we wouldn’t have got to sixth in the table and been looking at the play-offs if we’d been like that earlier in the season.

“This has come in the last couple of months, all in one hit.”

Substitute Bradshaw’s 86th-minute goal gave Sheppey hope of salvaging a point.

Report: Sheppey 2-3 Three Bridges

They gave it a go, boosted by five minutes of added time, but there was no way through.

“There was a bit of a grandstand finish,” said Batten.

“I said to the lads afterwards we put the ball in the box and Bradshaw scores but we didn’t do that enough.

“We always try to be a possession-based side but that’s the difference sometimes with experienced players, knowing when to change it up a little bit.

“We didn’t force them into any errors, whereas we made errors because they were putting balls in our box and getting round the back of us and getting balls in.

“Sometimes it’s a percentage game.

“We played Sittingbourne the other day and I don’t think Aiden Prall’s had a save apart from picking it out of the net from four set-pieces - a penalty, two corners and a free-kick.

“When you concede three it gives you a lot to do. Sometimes you’ll do it and win 4-3 and it’s a miraculous turnaround.

“We’ve had one of those against Merstham this season but we gave ourselves too much to do.”