A solid defensive display from the Lambs saw the teams locked together at 0-0 at the interval, but the 60th minute mark saw Southend edge in front. The hosts then doubled their lead shortly after, but Nathan Tshikuna’s powerful strike meant he halved the deficit with 20 minutes to go.

Southend secured victory in the 82nd minute as a failed clearance saw Sam Austin strike the ball into the net on the half-volley.

Peaks said: “I was quite pleased with a lot of the game performance-wise. Away to Southend on Tuesday night, the lads worked in the morning, travelled down a long way against a good team, 7-8,000 people on a Tuesday night, it’s a big ask. We stayed in the game for long periods, and the biggest disappointment for me was the third goal. Nathan just scored a great goal, and at 2-1 they’d got doubts in their head, which is what we wanted. We wanted to be in the game with ten minutes to go. The third goal was a killer.”

He continued: “Overall, we want to be better. We can’t keep giving goals away, we said that because there were still some errors that led to the goals. There was a lot of blocks, a lot of people putting a real shift in, and I can take that. We’ve got to just string it across 90 minutes because we got in at half-time at 0-0, quite happy. I’ve got to digest it, but it’s a hard place to come. This game and Saturday at Harrogate are two massive clubs that are not going to define our season.”

Peaks also mentioned how there were still individual errors that need to be eradicated moving forward, and feels that the third goal was an example of that.

He said: “We should’ve dealt with that ball. It was up in the air for a long time. Olly was disappointed with his clearance, it should’ve been better, but equally we talk about getting your mate out of trouble, so when someone makes a mistake I want the others to back him up. Someone else should attack that ball and we should’ve dealt with it. Then we’ve got ten minutes left at 2-1.

“The first goal was also frustrating because it was clearly our throw-in, everyone knew that and he didn’t give it our way. We’ve switched off and they’ve got in way too easily. We’d nullified them a little bit second half, we wanted to get through 20 minutes, and we’d almost got to that stage. Then we were disappointed to concede that one.”

Tamworth host Wealdstone on Saturday afternoon’s lunchtime kick-off. Peaks understands the importance of moving forward and continually improving, but ensured to keep his feet on the ground whilst finding his way through the rut.

He said: “I’m accountable. We’ve got a group in there that are giving [their] all. We’ve got to find a way. Looking at the last few games, I don’t think performances in general have been really poor, it is just literally making mistakes at key times. We’ve got to stop doing that, and we’ve got to stop conceding goals. There’s now a batch of matches where we’ve got to start picking some points up. I think we’ve played some good teams and I’m sure there’s going to be other good teams, but it’s about us. I’m still really confident with the group. There’s lots of positive things going on there. You could see today people playing for each other.

Peaks continued: “We’ve got to be realistic. We are still a part-time team in a full-time league and days like today tell you how tough it is after going to Harrogate at the weekend. They’ve worked this morning, travelled down this afternoon, we’re going to travel back tonight and then they’re working tomorrow ready to train on Thursday. It’s tough, it’s brutal. We knew that, but we’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves, we’re going to deal with it.”