CAPTAIN Ben Martin urged his team-mates not to get downbeat after St Albans fell to their fourth straight defeat. Speaking after Saturday s loss to Havant, the skipper said: It was very disappointing. Obviously it s four on the bounce now that we ve lost

CAPTAIN Ben Martin urged his team-mates not to get downbeat after St Albans fell to their fourth straight defeat.

Speaking after Saturday's loss to Havant, the skipper said: "It was very disappointing. Obviously it's four on the bounce now that we've lost and I don't think we've played massively different to when we were winning games but when you give away goals it makes it very hard to come back into the game.

"Don't get down about it, football's football. You win eight in a row, we've lost four in a row but it'll soon change around."

Martin believes the defence needs to stop giving easy goals away and that in turn will help ease the pressure on the strikers. "As you saw, you end up getting chances and panicking and maybe being 0-0 there's not so much pressure on you but that's football. Again we've had a few chances, Haks (Paul Hakim) in the first half, Haks hit the post in the second half and Si's (Simon Martin) had a good chance. Like I say when you give away stupid, stupid goals its makes it that much harder. It's putting a bit more pressure on us to get the goal instead of being a bit more relaxed."

The centre half says he doesn't feel any extra pressure to lift the players during this run and says that there is still a good spirit amongst the team. "There's obviously a responsibility but all the lads are grown men they can take it on their shoulders. When players play well they know and when players play bad they know. We're all going out for our Christmas do, there's 18 of us getting together and there is a good team spirit amongst us."

City face Hampton and Richmond at home and away over the festive period and Martin is hoping that the team can rediscover the form that saw them go eight games unbeaten early on in the season. "We're not miles away. They're (Hampton and Richmond) sort of second or third. Steve's (Castle) said he's had them watched and hopefully we'll take some form from when we were winning all those games into that. We'll certainly not get our heads down and keep our heads up and look forward to a good couple of games over Christmas.