Needham Market manager, Richard Wilkins, is planning to bolster his squad this week with the possible arrival of two loan players.

The Marketmen slipped to a 2-0 home defeat at the hands of Barwell on Saturday, never getting close to reaching the heady heights of Tuesday night’s 8-1 home win over Hitchin Town.

They also suffered an injury blow, with young centre-half JJ Wilson, the former Colchester United trainee, having to be helped off with a knee problem early in the second half.

“I have an opportunity to get a couple of players in on loan, which I think I will do now,” revealed Wilkins.

“JJ (Wilson) has twisted his knee, and it was sod’s law that (fellow defender) Dan Morphew was at a wedding, otherwise he would have done straight in there.

“We are two players short, and I think that showed today.

“JJ is going to be out for a few weeks, so we need to bring in a couple of bodies, maybe this week,” added Wilkins.

Referring to Saturday’s disappointing defeat, Wilkins admitted: “We were poor today. I didn’t think we started very well and starts are very important.

- Match report of Needham Market’s 2-0 defeat to Barwell

“It was a bit of an after ‘The Lord Mayor’s Show,’ I’m afraid. A lot of players turned up today and were not on it, if I’m being totally honest.

“There were a lot of fives-out-of-10 out there, while on Tuesday there were a lot of eights and nines.

I just said in the dressing room that you can’t keep dropping your levels. Having said that, it looked as though it was going to be 0-0 until we made two absolute clangers and conceded two goals.

“To lose in the manner that we lost is very disappointing.”

Wilkins felt that his side should have had a penalty, on the stroke of half-time, when Barwell keeper Liam Castle appeared to upend Luke Ingram in the box, but the Needham boss was also critical of his side’s defending for the goals.

Wilkins added: “Their bench said it was a 100% stonewall penalty, and we did from where we were, but the linesman and referee decided that it was a corner.

“But that still hasn’t stopped us from conceding two very poor goals. The first one needed to go into row Z from the short corner.”