Hakan Hayrettin says Maidstone players need to look at themselves after losing at St Albans.

Head coach Hayrettin was puzzled by a flat performance against a Saints side battling relegation.

Defenders Lewis Knight and George Elokobi and midfielder Zihni Temelci were the only players in the starting XI to do themselves justice in Hayrettin’s eyes.

The game was settled by Ross Marshall’s second-half own goal, with Maidstone remaining eighth in National League South.

Hayrettin said: “We didn’t really do anything in the final third, we didn’t have any shots, there was no directional play to get the ball in the box enough to try and win the game and when we did we didn’t really win the first or second phase.

“They got a ball in the box and we got a tap on it and it went in but we need to do better. It’s not good enough, really.

“We’ve got the nucleus of what we think is going to be right but people have to look at themselves today.”

The management had plenty to say in the dressing room after the game.

It was constructive criticism but the players knew exactly how Hayrettin and head of football Still felt.

Hayrettin added: “You rant and rave, the only person it’s going to affect is going to be you so you have to do it in a different way to get the best out of your players.

"But, saying that, we didn’t have a shot, not a real decent shot where the goalkeeper made a save.

“There’s no point in not telling them what you think. You can either do it today or you can reassess it on Monday.

“We chose to do it today, we told them exactly what we thought.

“There’s no hidden agenda. We know we’ve got to do better. It’s as simple as that.

“In certain areas of the game we controlled it but in other areas, where it really mattered, we didn’t do enough to control it.

"That was the most frustrating thing for us because we have players that have got natural ability, we have players that have got pace and strength and can make things happen but they didn’t do it today.

“You take the two centre-backs and Zihni out of it, the rest of them were average.

• St Albans 1-0 Maidstone

“When you’ve got all those players who are average, how are you going to win a game of football? You can’t.

“It’s hard to put your finger on it because we go through it and we tell them what we expect and they accept what we need and they go to work.

“They’re a fantastic bunch of players but we’re a heartbeat side, we’re up and down, and we can’t be like that.

“We should be coming here and getting three points or putting them under pressure enough to get three points and we didn’t do that.”

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