Magpies aim to rediscover winning touch on trip to high-flying AFC Totton

Maidenhead United boss Alan Devonshire admitted the Magpies were searching for the ‘X-Factor’ that will get them back to winning ways after recent defeats to Farnborough and Dorking Wanderers.

They’ll go in search of it once again this evening (Tuesday) when they travel to third placed AFC Totton.

United had been building some serious momentum in the league off the back of six straight league wins through to early October when they edged out Worthing 1-0 at York Road.

However, since then they’ve failed to win any of their last four, suffering 1-0 defeats at the hands of Eastbourne Borough, Farnborough and most recently Dorking Wanderers on Tuesday last week.

They’ll feel they should have picked up a few more points from those matches, particularly the Dorking game where the Magpies played reasonably well and had most of the play and the chances.

However, they never managed to recover parity after Brennan Camp’s 20th minute strike for the home side.

Having been knocked out of the FA Cup, they had another weekend off to collect their thoughts ahead of tomorrow’s trip to the Snows Stadium.

Totton were thrashed 6-3 by Macclesfield in the FA Cup first round on Saturday but have generally been in very good form this season. They’ve beaten Horsham, Weston Super Mare, Hemel Hempstead Town and Chelmsford City in the league in recent weeks but did slip up 2-0 away at Bath City during that run.

They could really bolster their promotion challenge with home wins over two of last season’s demoted sides, Maidenhead United and Ebbsfleet United this week.

However, the Magpies will also feel they should be turning more of their possession and opportunities into goals and that’s what they’ll hope materialises when the two sides meet tomorrow evening.

United have arguably been the better side in most of their recent matches, yet they haven’t won any of their last four and those results have seen them slip to 11th in the table. Against Tonbridge Angels a couple of weeks ago, they were the dominant side and should have been out of sight before half-time before allowing their visitors back into the contest in the second half.

Maidenhead are though still only three points off the play-off spots and that’s where they’ll be looking to get back to in the coming weeks if they can be a little more clinical in front of goal.