Unsurprisingly, Welling United co-caretaker manager Harry Wheeler was distraught by the team’s collapse at Eastbourne Borough and did not pull any punches when speaking afterwards.

“When you see some of the characters in there (in the changing room) it’s not that surprising” he said. “We have to sometimes try and lift them up, gee them up, but it seems that if we don’t say something from the side, they go missing.

“We know about Eastbourne. The first twenty minutes of every game they come out brightly and drift away. That’s why they never get into the play-offs, because they’re not a consistent side. We told them that and they conceded early on.

“Second half, we said again they’ll come out again, first twenty, weather it and then we’ll be in the game. We told them that and they conceded early on. There’s not a lot more, at times, that we can do and sometimes it’s down to characters when they cross that line.”

Although clearly unhappy with some of the players, he won’t give up on them. He continued “You’ve got to try and get the best out of what you’ve got. If you listen to us on the side, I don’t we can be accused of giving up because we don’t stop but we can only do so much vocally and some of them, it’s not that surprising that they give it in when it goes to 4-3.

Despite having scored three times, the attack was not spared of criticism. He continued “(We scored) three goals against a very poor side defensively. They were a very, very poor side defensively. Unfortunately we were worse than them.

“Before the last two games, defensively we’ve been quite good. We’ve had a solid back four, we’ve had quite a few clean sheets. Tonight we were awful. They were slightly better but they were awful as well. The manner of the goals we’ve scored against them shows that they weren’t a decent side defensively either.

Two players escaped criticism. Wheeler said “Dan Walker did very well. He was a positive in there. Danny Waldren was a positive as he is every match.”

Defensive injuries didn’t help with Rickie Hayles having to battle on despite being injured. “Dean Leacock did his groin just before the half and he came back out and he was limping. We asked them, between them, which one was going to get through the game more and Rickie felt his was easing slightly and at any point, Dean’s was going to pack up.

“We had to take a guess. It’s not ideal to lose either. If we had two centre halves on the bench we’d have changed two but we didn’t. We’ve had to try and adjust and it’s not ideal but again, the Tuesday night curse, Danny Waldren plays at centre half every Tuesday it seems.”

Jake Phillips drove down from Morecombe to make his debut. “He did okay. Fishy’s (injured Matt Fish) more experienced. When Fishy’s fit I’d expect him to come in and play. I think you look at the goals and try and be a little objective about it.”

“I think the second goal, the only one player in the box was their left winger so you’re going to question your right back but I’d have to watch it again and see. Apart from that he did alright.. He’s not the reason why we lost the game.”

Gosport’s two successive victories mean that Welling’s buffer from the drop zone has been slashed from eleven to five points and Wheeler was at pains to express how aware the management are that they are in the relegation dogfight. “We genuinely think that we can stay up.” He continued. “The only thing that I don’t like is when players say ‘We’re too good to go down.’

“That’s rubbish. No-one’s too good to go down. The league table doesn’t lie. You are where you are because you’re not too good to go down. I said we have to pick it up and fight. We showed a bit of fight at times but then sometimes we just threw it in and we’ve got to have a little bit more resilience and understand the game is 90/95 minutes.

“On Saturday they seemed to be pleased that they had kept it to nil nil in the second half. When ever did they think the game was 45 minutes, I don’t know.”

He continued “I do think that we will be alright if we react again on Saturday and if our home record stays as it is but we need to start picking up points away because you can’t just rely on your home record.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.