Tired Stones fail to reach Saunders’ high standards

Maidstone boss Jay Saunders wanted to put on more of a show for the big crowd on Tuesday night. United held National League champions Lincoln to a goalless draw in front of more than 3,000 fans at the Gallagher. They rode their luck at times against an Imps side whose boss Danny Cowley made nine changes. Saunders said: “I was a little bit disappointed with our performance if I’m honest with you. “I think we’ve set our standards quite high recently and I don’t think we really got to the standards we set. “I thought we looked a little bit leggy, little bit tired, but we dug deep. “I’d like the option to make nine changes but you can see we’re quite thin on the ground and we’ve got a lot of tired lads out there but they dug deep and got a point. “It moves us up to 11th which given where we were two months ago, that’s not bad. “We had the chance to go 10th and we wanted to do that but we knew it would be tough.” The draw extended Maidstone’s run to only one defeat in 14 matches and pushed them up to 11th place but Saunders said: “I thought we weren’t good enough on the ball tonight, we gave it away too cheaply. “We’ve been quite good in the final third of late and I think we’ve looked after the ball a lot better but tonight we didn’t quiet get at it. “I was just a bit disappointed. Maybe that shows how far we have come I suppose I just think in front of a big crowd we could have put on a better performance but I’m probably being harsh on the boys. “That’s one defeat in 14 so it’s a good run for us but with their fitness levels you could see they were the full-time side and they looked a bit sharper than us.”