Chris Kinnear couldn't hide his disappointment after seeing his Dover side beaten 2-0 at National League title favourites Lincoln on Friday night.

An early own-goal from Tyrone Sterling and a late Terry Hawkridge strike condemned Dover to a second-straight defeat and his side have now claimed just six points from their last six games and are hanging onto a play-off spot by a thread, while leaders Lincoln move nine points ahead with two games in hand.

Kinnear admitted: "I am disappointed. We didn't play as well as we have done. Even if we were top of our game it's not easy coming away to play a top side.

"As you can see (from the Sincil Bank stadium and 6,500 crowd) it's a massive club, they can go and pay £50,000 for a centre-half and thousands for midfield players.

"We're not in that situation but we make the best of what we've got."

He added: "Nobody played badly, but the lads know we could have played a bit better. If we were flying it's always hard to come here, especially with the euphoria they have got from beating Ipswich (in the FA Cup third round on Tuesday night.)

"I think they probably deserved to be infront at half-time but if that (Ricky Miller free-kick around the hour) goes in rather than hitting the post maybe everything changes.

"Then we're pushing forward and they kept hitting us on the break.

"We've got to give it a go. They don't make it easy, they get it up there, especially when Matt Rhead is on. It's a long ball to the big guy, but the way they play is the way they play, good luck to them.

"We play differently to some. Everyone has their way. They don't make it easy but why should they?"

Kinnear said one positive was the character shown after falling behind inside 10 minutes to an unfortunate own-goal, adding: "A lot of sides would have melted but we didn't. We kept pushing forward and the free-kick could have made a massive difference."

City keeper Paul Farman was only called into action on three occasions and Kinnear admitted: "We didn't test their keeper too many times and that's what makes it disappointing, with our forwards, but we've got to get that little bit of spark back.

"There's a long way to go yet. We've just got to get ourselves going, we can't worry about what (Lincoln) do in the future or any of the other sides. There are 11 or 12 teams in the league fighting for (promotion), all of them bigger than us.

"That doesn't mean that we can't give it a go and try and get ourselves in those play-offs again, which was a phenomenal achievement last year."