Herne Bay player-boss Liam Friend isn’t reading too much into FA Trophy weekend visitors Ashford United’s slow start to season ahead of first qualifying round match

Herne Bay player-boss Liam Friend isn’t reading too much into FA Trophy weekend visitors Ashford’s slow start to this season.

Bay will return to action after a 12-day break when they welcome Lloyd Hume’s Nuts & Bolts to Winch’s Field in the first qualifying round on Saturday.

While Ashford were fancied as one of Isthmian South East’s pre-season promotion favourites, they have taken only two points from their first four league games of the campaign, albeit they have progressed to the FA Cup second qualifying round.

Friend said: “They will probably not be happy with their start - but they have only lost twice!

“One goal here or there, and everything is very different. One thing they have got is a solid foundation, with the chairman in charge and an assistant manager (Craig Stone) that’s very experienced.

“I’m not reading too much into them having an apparent ‘bad start’. They will be confident and so will we.

“It’s not always as easy as ‘We’ve had a good start’ or ‘We’ve had a bad start’. Come Saturday night, they could still be in both (FA) cup competitions and only five points behind us.

“But we don’t worry about what other teams do, we worry about what we do. Apart from the Deal game, we have been pretty good this season, even in the Hassocks game that we lost.

“We will be ready to go again.”

Bay have enjoyed a much more encouraging start, albeit they did head into an enforced break on the back of a disappointing derby 2-1 defeat to the Hoops.

Defender Friend, 37, hopes it’s an experience his younger players learn from.

He said: “Normally if you have a poor result, you want to play again as quickly as possible.

“It’s been the opposite with regards to that. But it’s important that one result doesn’t define you.

“Just