Jay Saunders will use a break from competitive action to assess his Tonbridge squad.

Angels’ three-match winning streak in National South ended with a 1-0 defeat at Hemel on Tuesday.

They’d climbed into the play-off places with Saturday’s 4-3 win at Cheshunt before dropping to 10th after the Hemel loss.

It’s been a good start, particularly given the scale of Tonbridge’s injury problems.

Boss Saunders now wants to sit down with No.2 Lloyd Blackman and player-coach Tom Parkinson to plot the next steps, be it changes to the squad or tweaking Angels’ approach.

Saunders will look at a couple of players in a friendly against Hythe on Saturday (1pm) but has welcomed a blank weekend in the league.

“We’re 10 games in and we need to assess where we are,” said Saunders. “We definitely need to get an older head in and around it, which we know.

“These 10 days are really important, we’ve got to use the time wisely and get the most out of it.

“When you’re playing Saturday-Tuesday, the games come thick and fast and you don’t get a chance to sit down and evaluate where you are.

“I can now have a meeting with Lloyd and Parky and we can go through the squad and see what we think is working and what isn’t.

“At the end of the day, it’s been a decent start.

“We’re sitting 10th, four off points fourth, and we’d won three games in a row before Tuesday, which isn’t easy in this league, and we’ve had an absolute nightmare with injuries.

“The frustration is you look at it and I think everyone realises we could have more points but there are loads of positives.”

Tonbridge led 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2 at Cheshunt, with goals for Louis Collins (2), Ruben Soares and Jeremy Santos but the game ended up closer than it should have done.

On the flip side, Angels didn’t get going at Hemel but couldn’t dig out a result.

“No disrespect to Cheshunt but that should never have finished 4-3,” said Saunders.

“We played really well for long spells but we didn’t kill it off and it ended up like a basketball match.

“All the goals we conceded were avoidable and that’s something we’ve got to look at.

“Goals win games but you need clean sheets.

“Last season, Tonbridge had one of the best defensive records and struggled for goals and this season has maybe gone the other way a little bit.

“We’ve focused on how we can be more exciting going forward and maybe we need to go back and look at getting the balance right.”

Dominic Morgan-Griffiths scored the only goal for Hemel on Tuesday, and Saunders added: “We haven’t done enough to win the game, the disappointing thing is the goal we’ve conceded.

“They broke from our attack and we’ve had three chances to stop it where people could have made tackles.

“As I’ve said to the boys, we’re not going to play well every week but, when we don’t play well, we need to find a way to nick a point or win ugly."