Sheppey United assistant boss Geoff Record reacts to their 3-2 defeat at Margate as they prepare to face Herne Bay at Holm Park this Saturday in Isthmian South East

Sheppey United assistant boss Geoff Record knows they need to rectify their defensive issues if they want to turn their form around.

The Ites suffered a 3-2 defeat at Margate on Saturday and are on a run of five straight defeats, conceding 11 goals in the process.

Record said: “The bottom line is until we can find a way of not giving some very sloppy goals away, it is hard to win a game of football.

“We conceded three goals on Saturday, one from free play but the other two were set-pieces. We’ve had two or three games like that out of the last five where we have let goals in from set-pieces, where we haven’t got it away properly, and that’s a collective thing. It has been frustrating.”

Sheppey started well enough against Margate but conceding off the set-pieces led them to defeat at Hartsdown Park.

The Sheppey assistant boss said: “It was always going to be hard there, they have retained a number of players from their National League days, they have a lot of good players but for the first 35 minutes we dominated.

“We could have had a couple of goals during that period and then against the run of play we made a defensive error where they got around the back, got a cross into the far post and scored with a nice header in the back of our net.

“It was a tough one to take and despite playing well we went in 1-0 down at the break. We restarted the second half and equalised after a lovely move down the right side. Gil (Carvalho) clipped it towards the goal, it hit the inside of the post and just went over the line.

“There was some dispute over it but the linesman gave a goal straight away. The keeper definitely pulled it back into his chest once he caught it. The angle I had I couldn’t see but we got back into it at 1-1.

“They