It may have been individual errors that proved costly again for Halstead Town, but manager Mark Benterman feels his team were the architects of their own demise at AFC Sudbury Reserves.

Just as they did in their previous defeat by Ely City, the Humbugs paid the price for mistakes in a 3-2 Thurlow Nunn League defeat at Sudbury, but Benterman felt it was capitalising on their own good play where his team needed to focus.

The loss to Sudbury was the second consecutive game where Halstead had ended up pointless from a game where they had controlled the early exchanges and gone ahead.

So Benterman wants to work on improving his team’s resilience and ability to build on dominant spells in games as they head to Dereham Town today.

He said: “It’s something that we have spotted as a management group and it’s all about how we change it now.

“It’s down to characteristics in the squad and how we’ve reacted to taking the lead and then gone on to lose games from strong positions.

“Goals have come from individual mistakes in the last two games so we have to work harder in training as I firmly believe that you make your own luck. “But the characteristics need to change when we find ourselves in a strong position.

“We had 11 goal scoring opportunities in the first half at Sudbury and we scored one. Had we put more of them away, I wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“Results elsewhere seem to have been going our way so it’s not been a disaster (in terms of league position), but it has highlighted concerns.

“The boys have been working hard and I can’t fault them for that, but we’re not scoring enough goals as a team and we have to start putting chances away. If you do that, it eases pressure at the other end if mistakes are made.

“I was pleased with how we played, but individual mistakes cost us again. We have to accept that as a side, but we aren’t scoring enough and I want to see us more clinical in the final third.”