Ian Allinson wants his St Albans City side to get “back to basics” after they lost 1-0 to Whitehawk in the FA Trophy.

The Saints were nowhere near their fluent best at a chilly Clarence Park on Tuesday night but have the perfect chance for instant redemption when they face Eastbourne Borough at home on Saturday.

And the City manager says that is an opportunity they must seize.

Speaking after the Whitehawk defeat Allinson said: “We set standards and tonight our standards dropped from where we’ve been. If we drop our standards we’ll get our backsides smacked and we got them smacked tonight.

“We dropped our standards, didn’t do the basics right and we didn’t prepare properly before the game. We were coming out in little bits here and there, two or three at a time and that comes from me, that comes from the coaching staff and it comes from the players. We have got to get back to basics.

“I know it’s difficult on a Tuesday with players coming in from work and the pitch was a bit frosty in places but it was perfectly playable.

“They’re the sort of things that have to be right in the players’ minds and for me their mindset wasn’t right tonight.

“We reminded them about their manager walking out, we reminded them about how much respect they might want to give the new manager and we reminded them that we have to earn the right to win a game of football and we didn’t do it.

“[Whitehawk] defended very well, Sergio Torres and Danny Mills bossed the game for them and we didn’t get to grips with that.

“But that doesn’t take away the fact we’ve had three or four good chances and not taken them.”

He believes the club’s rise to second in the Vanarama National League South table, together with the 43 goals they have scored, has brought about a change in tactics for their opposition.

But with a bit more belief, he also thinks Saturday should herald a return to form.

He said: “We need to train hard and hopefully we will learn from tonight in terms of what we have to do to win a game of football. We’re not going to win 5-0 every time.

“It’s not that we haven’t been creating chances, we’re just not scoring goals. We’ve now got to go and punish teams by scoring from those chances.

“When you score 15 goals in three games, teams are going to respect you, which they done. They’re setting up different now and we’ve seen in the last three weeks the respect East Thurrock and Whitehawk have shown us. We haven’t shown enough guile and quality.”