Faversham Town joint-boss John Embery seeing positive signs despite starting season with three straight defeats

Upbeat Faversham joint-manager John Embery can see positive signs from his team despite starting the season with three straight defeats.

Town went down to a 3-2 home loss to FA Vase finalists Littlehampton last weekend in their first Isthmian South East encounter and lost 2-0 at newly-promoted Chatham on Tuesday.

Embery and joint-boss Jermaine Darlington have a free weekend this Saturday after being knocked out of the FA Cup by lower-league Colliers Wood.

The break will allow them to continue to gel their new-look squad having signed striker Junior Aikhionbare while Town remain on the hunt for further firepower.

Against Chatham, the Lilywhites held on for 76 minutes before striker Dan Bradshaw scored and Josh Ogunseye added an excellent second for Chats.

“We are gutted, absolutely gutted,” said Embery. “We worked so hard, we did really well as a unit.

“They had more possession than us but they had run out of ideas. One of our players got done with a ball over the top at 0-0. He came over and I said to him ‘Don’t get done again because you will get punished’ and that’s what happened!

“It was a tough night for us, there were massive improvements, but we didn’t get anything out of the game.

“Last 10 minutes of the first half, we did really well and then we backed that up in the second half. At the moment, we are short on strikers and we are looking to add more but, when Connor Cox had to come off, we moved Bradley Schafer up front and changed things around in midfield.

“So that’s a lot of changing around for one substitution. The first goal is frustrating but take nothing away from the finish for the second goal, there’s nothing you can do about that.

“It was a hard one for me and Jermaine to take - but there’s loads to