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Simon Walton says Maidstone must learn lessons from their FA Trophy win over Oxford City.
It wasn’t pretty as United edged past their National League South opponents through Jack Richards’ first-half goal.
They got over the line in Saturday’s second-round tie but joint caretaker boss Walton feels they will need to play better in the league.
He said: “It’s job done and hopefully a lot of lessons learnt.
“We can’t be too critical, because we won 1-0, but there’s a lot of lessons to be learnt from today and if we don’t learn them we’ll struggle in the league.
“There’s some tough games coming up and if we make the same mistakes, the same basic errors we made today, we’ll struggle.
“But we ground it out, we won 1-0 and it’s the sign of a good team when you win not playing well, so we’ll take that and we’re in the hat for the next round.
“They’re not daft. They didn’t come in there celebrating, they know there’s a lot to work on, but again the effort and attitude and everything’s there, it’s just a bit of game management and winning mentality are the words I used.”
Walton was pleased for Richards, who scored the winner on his first start of the season, having come in for the cup-tied Josh Taylor.
The 19-year-old academy graduate has made every squad under caretaker bosses Walton and Tristan Lewis and took his chance before tiring early in the second half.
Walton said: “He comes into training every day, he’s a little bubble of energy, he trains hard every day, worked his socks off on Wednesday in what was a real tough session and he got his chance.
“It was obviously down to circumstances but he’s earned his chance.
“He was very close to playing a couple of games ago, so he knows he’s part of it, he’s not on the periphery.
“I’m pleased for him. He blew up in the end but that was his first game of football for weeks and weeks.
“That’s another little boost for him but also a little boost for the club probably, one of their own coming through and scoring the winning goal’s always nice.”
