Geoff Record has some advice for Sheppey players following a poor run of form.

The Ites suffered a fourth successive Isthmian South East defeat on Saturday, losing 2-0 at Chichester.

They’ve slipped 15 points off the play-off places in 11th, albeit with games in hand.

Sheppey, whose match at Horndean last night was postponed 40 minutes before kick-off, visit Phoenix on Saturday and host Hythe on Easter Monday (both 3pm).

“I’ve been through losing runs myself as a player and as a manager,” said Ites assistant boss Record.

“All you can do when you’re on a run like this is don’t look at anyone else apart from yourself.

“That’s the starting point, and then try as hard as you can to ensure you don’t make any glaring errors.

“Once you bring that in, you can move forward but at the moment we’re giving away goals and I think we’ve scored 10 goals in 11 games and that’s not going to get you results.

“The players have got to try and pull together and concentrate on their own contribution and there’s your starting point for sorting things out.

“It’s a conversation we’ll be having.

“It can roll for a little while but sooner or later we’ve got to put the brakes on all this and get back on track.

“You never know what’s going to happen in football.

“Once we’ve got that win under our belts we’ll be able to move forward and get a few results.”

Mistakes from two unlikely sources proved costly at Chichester.

Keeper Aiden Prall was at fault for the early opener and captain Richie Hammill culpable for the late clincher, with both goals scored by striker Jimmy Wild.

“We can’t gloss over it - we’re on a poor run at the moment,” said Record. “We can’t buy a win.

“It was always going to be tough at Chichester, who aren’t a bad side, but we’ve made two bad mistakes for the goals.

“Both goals were self-inflicted.

“The first one, the header was quite weak, it didn’t have a lot of power behind it, but he’s got it on target.

“It just went to Aiden’s left and he couldn’t get his hands and feet sorted out and it squirmed in.

“He’ll have been disappointed with that but he’s made very few errors during the season.

“The second one, Connor Wilkins has passed the ball into Richie Hamill in midfield and, very unlike Richie, he’s had a poor touch and the ball has spun up in the air and gone straight to one of their players.

“He’s then passed to the striker who’s hit it first time and put us 2-0 down.

“That’s all you need when you’re on a run of defeats.

“We made a couple of subs.

“We put Bess (James Bessey-Saldanha) on wide left and Ladi (Oladipo Durowoju) on up front and they did quite well.

“Bess got some crosses in and Ladi had a goal disallowed very harshly for handball which would have got us back into it.”

With Javaun Splatt sidelined with a hamstring injury, there was a first start for new signing Jerson Dos Santos up front.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much to feed off.

“When you’re a forward you need a good supply but I don’t think we gave him a great deal,” said Record.

“He had a couple of good runs and one effort in the first half that he took early and the keeper saved.

“For any striker, you need a supply of crosses.

“I don’t think we had that in the first half but our crossing improved in the second half.”