George Elokobi felt Maidstone let standards slip in their derby defeat by Tonbridge on Saturday.

The Stones took 13 points from five National League South games in October but started November with a 2-1 defeat.

They looked set to take a point at the Gallagher Stadium after substitute Hamzad Kargbo headed home his first Stones goal in the 90th minute.

But Tonbridge, who’d taken a second-half lead through Eddie Simon, grabbed the points when Sean Shields struck in the eighth minute of added time.

Defeat saw Maidstone drop from sixth to ninth, a point outside the play-off places, going into another Kent derby at Ebbsfleet on Tuesday night.

“We are Maidstone United Football Club and I thought we dropped our levels, especially in the first half, and we can’t do that,” said manager Elokobi.

“In football, good teams, which we’ve been in the last month, maintain the same standards, the same levels in terms of off the ball and on the ball.

“Tactically, we’ve worked on how to expose their weaknesses but for some reason our intensity was really low in the first half.

“There weren’t willing runners in the areas we wanted to run and we let the game go by, and you can’t waste 45 minutes in football.

“All of a sudden we’ve gone a goal down, it’s taken us to change things tactically and then we started passing with real meaning, with purpose, less touches on the ball, more runs in the right areas, and we got a deserved equaliser.

Report: Maidstone 1-2 Tonbridge

“But again it’s about game management, limited touches on the ball, and I think that’s cost us a point today.”

Player-of-the-month Antony Papadopoulos, having set up Kargbo’s equaliser, was caught in midfield in the build-up to Shields’ late winner.

There were suggestions of a foul but Elokobi says Maidstone must learn from the goal.

“We spoke about it, if there’s one thing our players need to improve on, it’s limited touches on the ball,” he said.

“You haven’t got time, people close you down, opposition teams won’t allow you, they up their levels.

“We said it, every team that comes to play against Maidstone up their levels by 10-15 per cent.

“The ball moves quicker than the player, that’s how we got the goal, and again I can’t blame the officials because we dwell on the ball too much.

“However, part of the process is the learning curve, we’ve got to dust ourselves off and look forward to the next game and make sure we pick the right team to go and compete away from home on Tuesday night.

“The players are disappointed but it’s a long season, this result isn’t going to make or break our season.

“However, I feel for our supporters because we left it until the last 10-15 minutes to give them a real game and this is what we’ve been saying.

“As a manager I’ve highlighted that throughout the week, we cannot lower our standards, we cannot lower our intensity, we cannot lower our quality, it has to be there.”

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