Barren run dents Whitstable's confidence

WHITSTABLE TOWN boss Marc Seager admits his side are suffering with a loss of confidence as they travel to Merstham in the FA Cup first qualifying round on Saturday, writes Stephen McCartney.

Seager’s side lost their third successive game on their travels last night, going down 2-0 to Kent rivals Cray Wanderers - their fourth successive league game that they haven’t scored.

It has been 361 minutes that Whitstable Town have scored a goal in a league game, although that goal came courtesy of an own goal from Croydon Athletic's Bryan Glover (who has since re-signed for Sittingbourne).

Seager admits his players are “carrying the whole world on their shoulders” and has urged his side to win at Weldon Way to lift the gloom.

Seager, however, took the positives out of their defeat at Hayes Lane and will rally his troops during training tomorrow night ahead of the Cup clash.

“We’ll get away from the league and concentrate on the FA Cup on Saturday,” Seager told www.kentishfootball.co.uk.

“I would be nice to get a little run in it. We’ll go there full of confidence after tonight’s performance and we’ll go out there with guns blazing and hopefully come away with something.

“There were a lot of positives (but) we’ve been going through a bit of a tough spell.

“If we score one and they don’t score any, I’d settle for that. We’re going to go up there full of confidence. We’ll have a good training session Thursday night, another chance to pick the boys up. The boys can take a lot of heart out of tonight’s performance.

“People talk about a crisis and that but we’ve got more points this season and we’re further in the FA Cup, so I wouldn’t call it a crisis.

“If we can get that one win under our belts that will lift the confidence right up.

“There’s no better place to start than Saturday.

“We’ve got a lift out of our performance tonight and we’re going to go up there and give it our best shot.

“Hopefully on the day we’ll be good enough to get something out of the game.

“We’re a good side, just low on confidence at the moment, having a bit of bad luck as well. I’m not going to start feeling for myself, we’ve just going to keep plugging away and I’m confident we’ll get ourselves out of it.”

Seager has been granted permission by Ebbsfleet United boss Liam Daish to play striker Sam Callander in the game.

“He’s a young lad we’ve got on loan from Ebbsfleet,” revealed Seager. “He weren’t available tonight as they’ve got the FA Youth Cup (tie at home to Redhill on Wednesday night), but hopefully he’ll be involved.

“He’s at the Ebbsfleet PASE scheme. We had John Akinde (who recently left the Fleet to sign for Championship club Bristol City for around £140,000) at a young age and if we can help get Sam into Daish’s changing room that’s all well and good.”

Seager believes striker Ian Pulman will open his goalscoring account on Saturday, having been impressed with his graft against promotion chasing Cray Wanderers last night.

He said: “I know he’s desperate for a goal, but what he did was we got more of an all-round performance out of him and I’m sure those goals will come soon.”

Visit Whitstable Town’s website:  www.whitstabletownfc.co.uk

Merstham v Whitstable Town
FA Cup (Sponsored by E.ON) First Qualifying Round
Saturday 13^th September 2008
Kick Off 3:00pm
At Weldon Way, Merstham, Surrey RH1 3WB