Guildford Flames’ Head Coach Paul Dixon has refused to panic, despite seeing his team defeated twice over the weekend.

Flames lost 4-3 after overtime at home to Manchester Phoenix and followed up with a 6-4 reverse at Hull Pirates to fall to seventh in the EPL table.

Dixon said: “We would be lying if we didn’t think it was tough run at the moment, but we have to be careful not to be all gloom and doom.

“Saturday’s ultimate result is not the best way to evaluate the game. We out-shot them by a very large margin, nearly two-to-one across the evening, but we just could not bury it, and you have to score more than three when you generate that volume of shots.

“No doubt we have to be much more opportunistic with our chances, but we have to come away from that game knowing that whilst it didn’t go our way, we did get a point, and it was by no means a game to really feel bad about.

“We could have had a better result on Sunday as well, but when things are not going your way those little mistakes seem to be magnified, and you never seem to get any luck at all in those circumstances.

“When you are five-on-three for an extended period, then even six-on-three and you don’t score, there is a lot of bad luck for one team and a lot of good luck for another because regardless of your skill level it’s impossible to reliably defend that sort of manpower situation.

“We recognise that we’ve offered up some soft goals from opportunities we could have shut down before it ended up in the net.

“We have things we need to be better at, but there is no question we could easily be reviewing some better results using the exact same performance standard we have had to date.

“Having said that, we know results are what count, and that remains our objective.

“The only thing we can do at the moment is keep working hard and try to tighten up some of those things, so we can make better luck for ourselves while picking ourselves up off the mat for the large portion of schedule in front of us.”

(Image permission: John Uwins)