JOHN Coventry believes ‘chopping and changing’ will not help East Thurrock United out of their current predicament.

Rocks remain without a point this season and are rooted to the bottom of National League South after five defeats in a row at the start of term.

The latest of those came at Gloucester City on Saturday - with the visitors ending the match with nine men following two red cards.

Player/coach Paul Konchesky departed the club in the aftermath of the match, having been red carded on the hour mark.

And while Coventry refused to comment on Konchesky’s departure, he admitted he would not bring in reinforcements for the sake of it.

“If I can bring people in I will do that but I am old and experienced enough to know that too many changes can work against you,” said the East Thurrock manager.

“Chopping and changing won’t help us now and it really doesn’t matter which team we are playing next. This run will come to an end when we want to do things better and we work a little bit harder.

“What I will say is after we went down to 10 men on Saturday I saw more fight from the rest of my players than I had in a long while.”

Konchesky announced on social media that he had left the club.

He said: “Just want to wish everyone involved at East Thurrock United all the best for the rest of the season!

“I leave the club by mutual consent! Good luck to the boys.”

And Coventry added he was confident his team’s results would improve in time.

“I felt sorry for Ashley Miller (who was also red-carded) as the first one wasn’t a yellow card but the second one was,” said Coventry.

“When things are bad you hit a low point as a team before things gets better. The face of the matter is we are not good enough at the moment.

“But you can have all the hard luck stories in the world, ultimately we need points on the board.

“We have lost four games by the odd goal and hopefully we can change that once we have Sam Higgins back.”

The Rocks captain has missed the first five games of the season as he has been on his honeymoon but he is now available for selection.

“Something has to turn around but Sam Higgins starts his season this week and his absence has hurt us,” he said.

“If we are losing by one goal he can make the difference. He is our captain and a goalscorer.”