Ebbsfleet United manager Harry Watling on squad’s fitness level and his game plan in 2-1 home defeat by Oldham Athletic

Manager Harry Watling believes the Ebbsfleet squad he’s inherited need to improve their fitness levels.

The Fleet were noticeably second-best during their 2-1 National League defeat to Oldham last weekend.

New boss Watling has a string of injuries to contend with – striker Rakish Bingham has joined the likes of Luke O’Neill, Toby Edser and Jim Kellermann on the treatment table – and is conscious of asking for too much from those that are available for selection.

“We’re just struggling at the moment,” reflected Watling. “I’ve come into the job and, I’m saying this as respectfully as I can, the group didn’t have that solid foundation and base that you need in terms of robustness that you get in a good pre-season.

“We’re seeing that at the moment, we’re seeing a lot of players dropping off physically and I have to be honest, looking at the two teams on Saturday, Oldham were quite an impressive outfit so we need to address that.

“I expect more, I expect higher numbers, I expect higher output. I expect people to be running around more, sprinting more.

“At the minute we’ve got to do that gradually otherwise we’re just going to break all of them.

“If you had a pre-season with a group, you’d get that foundation in place for them to run and that running would match your style of play.

“That’s not quite there at the moment so I need to make sure that we get the right things in place to work that in.

“It's much more difficult to do it in the middle of a season but we’ve got no choice. We’ve got to roll our sleeves up and work properly.”

Read more: Ebbsfleet 1-2 Oldham match report

Watling also discussed his approach to the Oldham game, setting up defensively in the first half to ensure his team stayed in the match, only to