King's Lynn v Southport - manager Adam Lakeland's thoughts

A six-match unbeaten run has been followed by three National League North defeats and last weekend’s FA Trophy exit at Leamington.

This weekend they return to The Walks to face Southport, who have lost just twice in their last eight league games to sit two places and two points behind ninth-placed Lynn. 

Lakeland has been frustrated at the soft goals conceded in the last four games – a run in which Lynn have gone behind on each occasion.

Adam Lakeland needs to get King's Lynn Town back to winning ways (Image: Ian Burt)

“It’s down to hard work and remembering who we are, getting our identity back, being prepared to put the work in and finding ways to get results again,” he told the club’s official channels. “And I've absolutely no doubt that we will do that, but we've got to improve quickly.”

The hard work mantra will have been thrown at his players all week, after what the manager admits was a shambles at Leamington.

“We have to have a look at things now, because usually when you are losing on a run that we’re on, there's something fundamentally wrong,” he said.

“But I don't believe we've been really poor in those games. I think there's been moments in those games where we've had lapses of concentration, errors, bits of bad luck that have resulted in us going behind in all those games.

“And when you go behind you can come back and get a result or win a game every now and again. But if you're going behind four games in a row, well then it's very difficult to win. So we have to eradicate these soft goals. We took pride earlier on in the season in being hard to beat, difficult to play against, defensively solid. And I'm seeing us at the moment leak really soft goals. And I'd like to say that that's not like us, but that's four games in a row now where I've stood here and said that the goals we’ve conceded are soft or misfortune from poor officiating.”

Knockout competition exits can sometimes be excused by a need to concentrate on the bread and butter of league matters, but Lakeland saw last week as a missed opportunity to get back on track.

“There's no relief – I want to win games of football,” he said. “When we're not winning, I'm not happy and neither are the players.

“When this draw came out, we knew that this was always going to be really difficult encounter for us. They’re a really good team, they're very strong here at home. They’ve beaten a lot of really good teams here at home and will continue to do so throughout the season. It's a difficult place to come - bumpy pitch, tight pitch. But we came here to progress and we didn't give ourselves an opportunity to do that with the way that we started the game. Yes, we're out of the competition and we can put all our eggs into the basket of the league, but King’s Lynn haven't done well in this competition for years and we really wanted to get past this first hurdle and see if we can get a bit of a run going and not only for the benefit of the Trophy, but so that we could return to winning ways and try and get our form going in the right direction again. And we've managed to achieve neither and we're all bitterly disappointed about that.”

The last time the teams met at The Walks was on September 9 last year, when Southport won 4-1 - a game that proved to be Mark Hughes's final home league game in charge. Just three players - goalkeeper Paul Jones and defenders Josh Coulson and Kyle McFadden - survive from the squad that day.