Home form again deserted Welling United as they were well beaten by an East Thurrock United team that were better in nearly every department.

Hugo Langton assessed the match saying: “I thought that the difference was that they (East Thurrock) did the basics a bit better than us. Sam Higgins, two good goals, two bits of quality to be fair.

“They didn’t outwork us, I thought the work rate was there today. We tried to get on the front foot, particularly in the second half when we brought Tom Bradbrook on. We had a period of the game as well, probably the first 15/20 minutes of the second half when you felt that if you nicked a goal or got back into it at one all, possibly it would have been a different game.

“Two bits of Sam Higgins quality, which he’s been doing for years and years and years in the end was the undoing of us. You’ve got to win your individual battles. They didn’t play us off the park. They just did the basics better than us.”

He accepted that the coaches will be going flat out to end the mini blip in form. “We’ll reflect on it.” said Langton. “We’ll do what we need to do as a management team and we’ll just have to work hard this week to put it right.

“We’ve said to the players it’s an important week now. We’ve lost two on the bounce and it’s not something we’ve done recently. We’ve just got to be honest with each other this week and bounce back and put in a performance against Truro next week.”

Jeffrey Monakana’s absence with a minor hamstring strain meant that the team had to be shuffled a little. “You’re looking at the wide areas.” said Langton. “You could play Jebby (Jack Jebb) out there but he’s not a player that plays in that role whereas Archie (Johnson) can play as a winger and Nana (Christian Nanetti) is a winger..

“We wanted Archie to play because he has got good delivery but Nana’s a ball carrier as well.”

Suggestions that a change of formation might make a difference were refuted. “It’s very difficult to suddenly change a system of play. We’ve got players that fit into the system but to start toying with systems can take quite a lot of work to get things right.

“We went on a really big run with the system and things were great and all of a sudden things have just gone the other way a little bit lately and we’ve just got to fight back and work hard to get back to what we know we are capable of doing and get some results on the board again.

“I think it’s not necessarily about the systems you play.” he continued “It’s about what you do with the system. It doesn’t matter if you play three at the back, five at the back, four at the back, two at the back, it doesn’t really matter to me but you’ve got to do the basics right.

“You’ve got to be brave to go and get the ball, move the ball, pass it and move again. When the ball’s coming into the box, have the mindset to go in and think ‘I’m going to finish this.’ or ‘I’m going to die to get on the end of it.’ When you’re defending your own box as well you’ve got to think ‘You ain’t scoring today.’

Langton concluded: “You can talk about systems and tactics all you like but if you lack a little bit of quality in an individual game, systems don’t matter.”