Scott Porter admits Whitstable Town have been dragged into the Bostik South East relegation dogfight.

Eight games without a win have seen the Oystermen drop to within five places and six points of basement side Greenwich.

The bottom three all won last weekend, while Whitstable didn’t have a game.

Porter said: “We’re getting into a little bit of a fight at the minute.

“You can see that with the results on Saturday – Sittingbourne, Herne Bay and Greenwich winning.

“Guernsey and Faversham lost but we’ve got to pull ourselves away from that.

“Mathematically we are (in the dogfight). We’ve picked up three decent results but we only got three points out of them.

“I’ll never say we’ve turned the corner until we’ve won a few games but we’re getting back to being a hard team to beat.

“We’ve got some tough games coming up and some crucial ones as well against teams below us: Sittingbourne and Herne Bay.

“We are in there, of course we are, and we’ve got to fight our way out of it like the teams below us are doing.

“Faversham are picking up results as well so we’re in a fight.

“It’s something I’ve never been involved in before but it’s part of management and we’re working hard to get ourselves out of it.”

Suspensions are hurting Whitstable with two of their strikers out of Saturday’s home game against Horsham.

Ricky Freeman is banned for two matches and Steve Smith for two, leaving the league’s lowest scorers even lighter up front.

Porter said: “We’re trying to bring people but it’s so hard.

“Strikers are the hardest ones to get hold of.

“We’ve worked immensely hard over the last 7-10 days to get someone in but if we don’t, we’ll work with what we’ve got.

“We do need a win but we play better against the better sides.

“Horsham are flying but if we can get a result, it’ll give us a good lift in time for the crucial run-in.

“When you’re at home, you’ve got to be hard to beat and to be fair, in the last three games we have been that.

“We’ll change the system to suit the players we’ve got.

“It sums us up, these two getting banned at a crucial stage.

“Discipline hasn’t been great, it’s been notified and we’ve got to rectify it.”