Maidstone United manager George Elokobi says his side were second best from start to finish in 4-2 National League South defeat at Chesham United

George Elokobi was gracious in defeat after Maidstone went down 4-2 at Chesham on Saturday.

The Stones were comprehensively beaten in a setback to their National League South play-off chances.

They’re still only three points off the top seven, after dropping a place to ninth.

But with teams around them having multiple games in hand, there’s little room for error in the final six matches.

Chesham led 2-0 at half-time against an out-of-sorts Maidstone side and while Jamie Yila replied, the hosts went 4-1 up before Christie Pattisson struck in added time.

“It could have been more,” said Stones boss Elokobi, who was missing skipper Sam Corne (ankle) and defender David Agbonothoma (Achilles) from last week’s starting XI against Farnborough.

“Congratulations to Chesham. They fully deserved the victory.

“From start to finish they were tremendous, so you’ve got to give credit where it’s due.

“We were second best from start to finish and the only positive is we’ve not played anywhere near our best and we’ve managed to score two goals but we didn’t get going in terms of the physicality of the game. They just did the basics better than us.

“We spoke about it, we knew exactly where it was coming and we said we have to be brave, we have to have more desire to want to win first contacts, second contacts, and then have that bravery and coverage to pass in the final third, like we saw for the second goal we scored.

“It’s that little bit of quality, interchanges of passes and movement, so those are the positives, but if you don’t compete and win those individual duels all over the pitch then you have results like this.”

Report: Chesham 4-2 Maidstone

Five wins in six games had raised play-off hopes and put Maidstone top of the form