MALVERN Town manager Les Jones was more concerned with his side’s defending than their finishing after losing 2-1 to Pegasus Juniors at the HDanywhere Community Stadium on Tuesday.

They continued their sluggish start to the West Midlands Football League Premier Division campaign, which had shown spectacular signs of perking up in Saturday’s 6-0 home thrashing of Tipton Town.

But Jones admitted it was a difficult time in the season with holidays in particular making it tricky for him to field a consistent side in the early stages, contributing to three defeats from the first four fixtures.

Malvern missed their fair share of chances against Hereford-based Pegasus with Lee Hooper, scorer of four goals against Tipton, denied by a point-blank save among several good stops and fellow forward Matt Turner ballooning a fine chance over.

However, the biggest waste was early on when Sam Rathbone rolled the ball towards goal only for wing-back Lewis Platt to unnecessarily provide a finishing touch and be ruled offside.

Pegasus then went down to the other end almost immediately to score through a clinical Chris Mortlock finish and unmarked defender Mark Davies added a second before lively substitute Ben Hayes pulled a goal back in the second-half.

Jones said: “Realistically at our level, if we keep a clean sheet or only give one goal away, we’ve got a really good chance of winning as we certainly have our creative players. Our priority has to be to stop giving those goals away.

“It was disappointing to lose a local derby and we should have got at least a draw out of the game. We dominated the second-half but just couldn’t score another goal.

“We’re not taking our chances and have given sloppy goals away. If we’d got that first goal (when Platt was offside), I feel we’d have gone on to score several more.

“But we haven’t had any consistency in our team selection yet due to holidays and other commitments. After six to eight games, players will be back off holidays and we will know more about the opposition.”

Midfielder Reece King is one of those on holiday after completing a ban, while experienced centre-half Dene Whittal-Williams is still several weeks off action despite returning to training after a leg infection.

Forward Dave Reynolds (work) and injured midfielders Anthony Smith (groin) and Dane Aldington (thigh) should return at mid-table Willenhall Town tomorrow (3pm) but Turner is away for the weekend.

Third-from-bottom Malvern host Wolverhampton Casuals on Tuesday (7.45pm).