Paul Doswell felt that Saturday’s game at home to Maidstone mirrored several at Gander Green Lane this season. ‘’There have been quite a few where teams have come and sit in for a point, and have made it clear from the first couple of minutes in the game, and I think this was one of them. If you look at it, though, we’ve had loads of chances, good ones as well, and as we didn’t take them I think the game became more and more frustrating to watch and to play in as well. But it’s kept the run going – we’re unbeaten in eight now, with five wins and three draws, and we’re going in the right direction. You’ve got to give Maidstone credit as well, as they came here with a plan and it worked for them.’’

A big reason for Sutton’s failure to score was Maidstone keeper Andy Walker, who made several fine saves. ‘’The save from Steve Watts in the first half was a quite brilliant save,’’ said Paul. ‘’ We’ve had other chances, though, early on Danny Phillips shot wide when he possibly should have scored, we had Steve’s header and then the volley early in the second half, and then things just carried on in the same way. Maidstone have done things well, and I don’t think we were quite good enough or clever enough to break them down, but on another day we could have won by three or four and everyone would have gone home happy, so it was a strange game.’’

U’s played the last half hour against ten men, after Maidstone’s Chris Saunders had been sent off for what some people thought was a harsh second yellow card. ‘’I think the first booking was right, so then to go and commit another foul straight afterwards puts yourself in the position where the referee’s got the opportunity to send you off. I don’t actually think it helped us, as they sat in even more with ten men – at least with eleven they were coming out at us occasionally.’’ Paul also felt the referee played a central role just before half time as he turned down U’s penalty claims. ‘’ I think the lads were asking for two. The first one was when the ball came in and definitely struck a hand when we were appealing, but the worse one was just afterwards when Matt Hann chipped the ball in and you saw this big black glove come up and tip it off Steve Watts’ head. We had about eight players appealing for it, we were appealing for it on the touchline, but the referee’s got to be helped out by his linesman. We had a similar one at Boreham Wood, and earlier we’d had a situation where the referee had given us a free kick for handball and the linesman hadn’t given that one either, so we feel a little bit hard done by, but I don’t think we’re going to win the league so we’ll take it as another point towards a place in the playoffs.’’

After giving some players a rest on Tuesday, there was more rotation of the squad on Saturday. ‘’We gave Alan Bray a complete rest today, as he’s played in most of the games this season, and also gave Sonny Cobbs and Sam Gargan a rest from starting. Steve Perkins and Charlie Taylor were on the bench as well, and they’ll all obviously be in contention for Tuesday night. We feel it’s so important at the moment to keep players fresh and ready to play, and the heavy pitches have taken a lot out of the players’ legs, so we’re trying to mix things up at the moment but once the pitches begin to firm up, which ours was showing signs of doing today, then we’ll go back to a more settled line-up.’’

U’s made all three changes again early in the second half, but Paul felt it was one of those days where they didn’t work. ‘’I was disappointed with them today. Normally the impact from our substitutes is very good, but I thought Sam and Charlie were disappointing, and that Sonny did OK, but no better than that, and it all went toeards the general malaise of the last twenty minutes, which was the most disappointing aspect of the game. We lost a bit of shape, and we lost some of our ideas as to what we were trying to do. We asked them to pass the ball more, particularly in the second half with the wind behind us, which we tried to do but to no avail.’’ One of the substituted players was Danny Phillips, and Paul explained the change. ‘’He picked up a knock in the first half from their right back, who I thought had a good battle with Danny in the first hour, so we were aware of that at half time, and also because of the pitches Danny hasn’t played a lot of football recently and by his own admission gets a bit tired after 60 or 65 minutes, but that will get better as the pitches firm up and he plays more games.’’

Apart from that Paul has a fit squad to choose from on Tuesday against Horsham, with Alan Pouton also close to a return. ‘’Alan did a good half an hour’s worth of running today, so he’ll come in to the reckoning, and apart from that I think everyone was OK. The conditions were difficult today, not so much because of the pitch but because of the wind which was hurling the ball around a bit. It would have been nice to have seen a more attractive game to watch but it wasn’t to be.''