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Goals can flow for Ebbsfleet's Craig Tanner says manager Dennis Kutrieb

Ebbsfleet boss Dennis Kutrieb believes there’s more to come from Craig Tanner.

The Fleet midfielder netted in back-to-back games for the first time this season, his wonderful free-kick setting them on the way to a 2-0 win over Eastbourne in National League South.

Craig Tanner - took his tally for the season to six on Saturday. Picture: Chris Davey (55136179)
Craig Tanner - took his tally for the season to six on Saturday. Picture: Chris Davey (55136179)

It took his tally for the season to six – his other goals coming as doubles against Welling in November and at Hemel Hempstead in January.

While Tanner leads the way with assists – he’s already created 11 goals for his team-mates – Kutrieb believes the goals should be coming with greater regularity.

“I said after Hemel that we will see more goals from him and I still believe in the last 13 games we will see many more goals,” stated the Fleet boss.

“He is still getting used to what we want, which areas we want to see him. He is able to score goals, he’s shown that in the past at Aldershot as well.

“We need to find him in the right areas so he can score goals or assist as when you put the ball through many times for a one-on-one, like Shaq in the second half on Saturday.

“It’s not just the ability to score but to assist and that’s great to have in the squad.”

Tanner was left out for one game after the big defeats at Maidstone and Dorking. But he’s started every game since then, and will continue to do so if he can keep delivering for his side.

Kutrieb added: “He needs to get used to us, we need to get used to him. He needs to find our strengths and he needs to find himself at Ebbsfleet.

“It’s not that you’re a player and you come in and play off the cuff, you need to do some jobs and he is getting more used to it. He’s important to us as a team player.

“There are different jobs that need to be done and he’s doing that for us at the moment. He scored a wonderful goal against Havant, he’s assisted a few goals as well so is on a good run.

“If we get more and more players on the same page that deliver and get the form at the right performance level then we don’t need to be scared.”

As much as Fleet’s attacking play impressed Kutrieb, it was their defending that was most pleasing.

Ebbsfleet 2 Eastbourne 0: match report

A much-needed clean sheet after shipping four goals at Havant the previous week was the basis of their success.

“We asked for a clean sheet and that was the most important thing after we conceded four unnecessary goals in the last game,” said Kutrieb.

“You could see in the line-up we were a little more defensive than in the games before.

“We will score our goals all day long as we’re good enough as a team but we need to make sure we don’t concede.

“I’d say it was a well-deserved win. We had a spell in the second half when we should have scored our second goal earlier.

“We can always talk about winning games and scoring goals but if you want to be successful, we have to make sure we don’t concede. We defended as a team very well.”

Fleet will wait on news of Tobi Adebayo-Rowling’s knee injury after he came off in the second half on Saturday while they are also waiting on the scan results from Alfie Egan after he was injured in Wednesday’s Kent Senior Cup tie at Bromley.

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