CITY boss Steve Castle has urged his players to keep the faith after two defeats over the Bank Holiday weekend. Defeats to Bishop s Stortford and Hampton & Richmond saw City fall to 14th in the Blue Square South table as City find goals hard to come by. T

CITY boss Steve Castle has urged his players to keep the faith after two defeats over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Defeats to Bishop's Stortford and Hampton & Richmond saw City fall to 14th in the Blue Square South table as City find goals hard to come by.

The club are also facing a mountain of suspensions with Paul Bastock, Solomon Shields, James Fisher and Jamie Thurlbourne all set to miss big games after red cards and so it's not hard to see why the squad are short on confidence.

However Castle has faith in his squad and is backing them to turn it around despite what looks like a tough September ahead.

"To a degree I'm pleased with these lads," said Castle after Monday's defeat to Hampton.

"We can't make a mistake and not get punished for it at the moment and I just want them to keep the belief in me, keep the belief in themselves and more importantly in each other. Everything other than results is going in our favour. We've just got to have enough faith, all of us, to think if we're competing enough against the better teams we'll start to get results.

"We had an occasion last year, twice, when we went on a good unbeaten run and I think we're an early goal and a little bit of confidence away from getting that."

Monday's game was marred by a sub-standard refereeing performance from Paul Forrester. The Luton-based official sent off Jamie Thurlbourne before half time and as frustration grew, City also had Castle sent to the stands and James Fisher dismissed after the game.

Castle admitted afterwards that his team should have shown better discipline but felt that they had every right to be aggrieved with the official's performance.

"We've got to show a little bit more discipline than that. I'll take responsibility for that bit of ill-discipline by me, it was quite harsh because all I said was are we going to get anything and he deemed that was a sending off.

"I've got Luke Thurlbourne with a cut from an elbow, I've got James Quilter who'll be struggling for Saturday with a two-footed lunge and in regards to the refereeing decisions, I don't like to make too many comments but I feel very, very hard done by.

"That is ill-discipline from James (Fisher). We are all getting frustrated with the situation, we're getting frustrated with the results and he's done the worst thing possible. It's very, very hard on him, it's going to cost him in the pocket.