GRAYS manager Frank Gray admitted he considered switching his formation ahead of Tuesday night's 2-0 loss at Gravesend & Northfleet where Blues were swamped by the hosts three man midfield.

Gray, who employed a 3-5-2 formation at former club Farnborough, toyed with the idea of playing three at the back to mirror Fleet's own formation but, in the end, plumped with the tried and tested 4-4-2.

But Blues were over-run in midfield forcing Gray to scrap the system after 45 minutes to re-inforce his midfield.

"I looked at it and thought about it and decided we would try and let our wide players concern their wide players more if possible but it didn't quite work for us," he said. "We didn't get the ball out to the wingers in the first half and that's why I changed it to match them up in the second half."

Despite the change in system, Grays still could get to grips with a committed Fleet outfit and slipped to a disappointing 2-0 defeat.

"I don't think we particularly deserved anything from the game. There was not a lot of chances in the game as a whole. I thought we had some decent chances. When it was 1-0 we had a decent chance to equalise through Aaron McLean, didn't take it and they went straight up the other end and made it 2-0.

"They battled and worked hard all over the pitch and on reflection, I suppose they deserved the win."

McLean's miss just past the hour mark was, without doubt, the turning point in the game as just minutes later former Blue Mark DeBolla's pot-shot was mis-judged by Ashley Bayes and ended up in the back of the net.

Gray said: "Ashley has held his hands up and said he should have saved it. But he has been fantastic this season and regardless of where you play you are going to make mistakes in a season and I think that was his first so far. So I won't hold him to task over that.

"It was a disappointing goal to lose because I felt the longer the game went on at 1-0 I felt we could have pressurised them a bit more but the goal killed us a little bit."