As any supporter who travelled more than 1,000 miles to watch the performances at Dover Athletic and Dagenham & Redbridge would attest, Chester FC played much better than the final scorelines suggested.

But nevertheless, the Blues will head into tomorrow's BT Sport live home clash with fellow play-off outsiders Gateshead (12.15pm kick-off) on the back of one of their poorest runs of form of what remains a season of significant improvement.

Four points from the last 18 on offer means Chester have slipped to 12th in the table, nine points behind fifth-placed Dover, and three behind their next opponents.

So, at his weekly press conference, Jon McCarthy was asked about the current run of results.

And here's what the Blues boss had to say...

Macca on form

"I'm genuinely not (concerned) but I'm not complacent. I think you'll find, if you go through your recent archives, you'll find me saying I know how quickly you can lose six games in this league.

"I know how it difficult it is to go on an eight-game (unbeaten) run, and we did that, and even longer than that, so all of that evidence is there. It's not putting it out there in the universe so it can happen, there's just a realism about a group of games we've had.

"But really, my players have produced. They got up for the Dover game, where things could have gone our way, and they got up for the Dagenham game. They made some mistakes in those games and they are the bits I can control and I can work on. The players individually see those clips, so we can try and ensure they don't happen again.

"But, again, the work that we did and the preparation that we did, we got ourselves in the right place.

"I'm trying to create this perfect storm all of the time. The bits I can control I try and deal with - let's keep people fit, let's give them give the right game plan, let's be organised, let's give them information on the opposition, let's produce a performance - and when some of the other bits that aren't in my control fall into place, we go and get good results."

Dave Powell reports back from Jon McCarthy's press conference

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Chester dominated large parts of the contests with Dover and Dagenham, teams who are fighting it out for promotion.

But McCarthy countered the suggestion that the Blues are not being clinical enough.

Macca on defence and attack

"We scored away at Dover, scored two goals away at Dagenham, and I say to my team, score at least one goal every game. That's my mantra. We're allowed to concede one but we have to score one every game and, if we do that, we pick up a point, 1-1.

"If we can get it defensively right and keep a clean sheet, we win 1-0, and if we get the other side of it right, the attacking side, we win 2-1, and I base a lot of my stuff on that.

"So I would think the opposite. We have been clinical enough but we've conceded too many goals and made too many mistakes.

"In amongst that, you have to throw in three penalties and three sending offs, which is an extreme part of the season. We're not a team that has an horrendous disciplinary record, so there's been an element of that has gone against us in the last five games.

"That completely skews performances, results and defensive records. So I have to weigh all that up and when I did, it felt like this was a mirror image of the beginning of the season.

"So we've ended up being back at the beginning of the season. We then looked at tightening things up and we went on that unbelievable run of clean sheets. So the goals are all right, it's the other end we have to get a balance of.

"I bet if you look at the table, we're in the top eight in terms of goals scored, and that's where we want to be, but it's the other side of things that are letting us down a little bit, so we'll go back to basics on that."