Tonbridge missed out on a significant mid-season marker after losing to Welling on Boxing Day.

Victory at Longmead would have seen Angels match their entire tally of league wins from last season.

But they remain on 10 just past the halfway point of the campaign after Ade Azeez’s second-half goal saw the visitors pinch a 1-0 success in front of 1,270 fans.

“I looked into it at the weekend,” said Angels boss Jay Saunders, who succeeded Steve McKimm last summer.

“Tonbridge won 11 games all last season and we were on 10 at the halfway point.

“It sounds silly but it would have been nice to match that at Christmas, a good marker to move forward and show the progress we’ve made since coming in.

“We’ve also only scored five less than the whole of last season and although we’ve conceded more, the point of coming in was to try and make us more attack-minded.

“It does mean we’re more open at times but it makes us a bit more exciting to watch. It’s fine lines.

“We want to keep clean sheets but we want to keep trying to play on the front foot and scoring goals.

“All in all, to have 10 wins at this stage of the season shows a steady improvement.

“That’s nothing against last year, I just mean in terms of what we wanted to do when we came in.”

Saunders felt Tonbridge were the better side against Welling but the visitors went home with the points.

They couldn’t make their dominance count and Warren Feeney’s men made them pay.

The teams meet again in the return fixture at Park View Road on New Year’s Day (kick-off 3pm).

“I couldn’t fault the boys’ effort and endeavour, we just lacked a bit of quality in the final third,” said Saunders.

“We dominated large parts of the game. We’ve hit the bar and the keeper’s made a couple of great saves.

"It’s one of those where if we’d taken the lead, I think we’d have gone on and won.

"But when you’re playing against Welling and they’ve got forwards of the quality of Stefan Payne and Ade Azeez, two of the best in the league, one good bit of link-up and you lose the game.

“Take nothing away from Welling. At the end of the day, they’ll look at it as a good away performance but it’s frustrating from our point of view.

“We had a decent-enough performance in front of a good crowd, we didn’t deserve to lose and I’m sure the majority of people there would say the same.

“Nine times out of 10, if you control the game as we did, you’ll win.

“You can see we’re playing the right way. We’re playing some good stuff and on another day we’d have scored a couple of goals.”

Tonbridge were boosted by the return of Joe Turner and Tommie Fagg as second-half substitutes.

Turner is fit again after a hernia operation, with Fagg back after nearly three months out with a groin injury.

Saunders said: “It’s good to have them back in the fold. It makes the squad stronger and we could have Ruben Soares in contention for New Year’s Day, who’s another one we’ve missed.

“We’ve had injuries all season but all of a sudden we’re getting people back and you’re looking at the squad thinking, ‘Yes, we’ve got players who can make an impact’.”