Dover Athletic manager Jake Leberl reacts to their 2-1 National League South home loss to Hemel Hempstead Town

Jake Leberl felt naivety cost Dover dearly in their home National League South defeat to play-off occupants Hemel Hempstead Town on Saturday.

Whites suffered a fifth straight loss, a fourth on the spin in the league, as they were beaten 2-1 despite striker George Nikaj’s first-half goal.

Dover trailed inside two minutes to the fifth-placed team and, although they hit back before the break, they conceded the game’s all-important third goal - moments after midfielder George Wilkinson had taken a quick free-kick that, instead, allowed Lee Allinson’s Tudors to launch a counter-attack.

“Starting like we did, giving them a goal the way we did, it’s just so naive,” bemoaned manager Leberl. “So, we’re a goal down in the first couple of minutes and we’re up against it.

“I thought we did relatively well to get back into it and got an equaliser. I then didn’t think there was much between the sides.

“But when you’re on the back of three or four defeats, you have just got to game manage. We have tried to take a quick free-kick - which was never on - we weren’t set, and, with the little bit of momentum we had, before you know it, the ball’s in the back of your net.

“The real concern is, at 2-1, I just sensed the belief came out of the boys.

“They looked half-beaten.”

While 14 points separates the teams, there was little between them on the pitch in front of a crowd of 620 at Crabble on a cold day.

Leberl, who was forced to start defender Harrison Sodje on the substitutes’ bench, said: “Their game management was a lot better than ours throughout the whole game. We have lost the game on poor game management.

“Ryan (Hanson) is an experienced boy but, in the first minutes of the game, he has tried to take it down in the middle of the