Steve McKimm takes heart from the compliments coming Tonbridge’s way.

Angels’ 1-0 Boxing Day defeat by Maidstone made it nine games without a league win for McKimm’s side.

They’ve performed well in the majority of those games, just lacking the killer touch, and have been complimented by a number of rival bosses.

Sometimes that can add to a manager’s frustration when the results aren’t coming, but McKimm, whose side are 19th in National South, welcomes the comments.

Stones boss Hakan Hayrettin was the latest to praise the Angels and the sides do battle again at the Gallagher on Sunday.

Asked if he’s fed up with hearing compliments in defeat, McKimm said: “No, because that way you know you’re doing something right.

“I think you know certain people say it for the sake of it and you know certain people are genuine and I think everyone that’s said things to me are genuine people.

"I won’t name all names but everyone’s genuine.

“It’s in our hands. It’s all right being the nearly men, you can’t be the bridesmaid, you’ve got to be the bride and that’s what we’ve got to start doing.

“We’ve got to step up and really make a statement. I thought if we’d stepped up another level we’d have got something out of Boxing Day but we seemed to settle and hope we'd get something.

“That’s something we’ll look at on the video.

“I might end up apologising to the players but that’s what it felt like watching the game.

“I’m not frightened of apologising to them if I’m wrong.

“I’ve said to them in there I thought we could have done a little bit more.

“If I’m wrong, I’m sorry, if I’m right, we’ll go through everything on the video analysis and show them where we could have done better.”

Tonbridge’s 2-2 draw at the Gallagher two years ago triggered an upturn in form that saw them pull away from trouble in National South before the season was curtailed.

McKimm hopes another decent performance will lead to a similar improvement in results, with Angels only five points clear of bottom side Billericay.

He said: “We’ll prepare for Maidstone away which again is going to be another huge game but not necessarily in terms of the stature of the fixture for the clubs, I’ve got to look at it as a huge game for us to get points.

“Is there anything there that fears us? Not really, I think we coped with them.

“Saying where they are in the league to where we are, I think we coped with them and they’ll say the same about us.

“Was there anything for them to worry about? Probably not.

“But the thing is they’ve come off with the three points, we haven’t, and we’ve got to dust ourselves down and go for it next week.

“When we’ve been in these situations before I’ve basically gone for broke and that’s what we’ve got to do because draws are no good to us, we’ve got to start winning three points."