ADAM Peek insists his Southend Manor side must focus on claiming their first win of the season and ignore the occasion when they take on Hashtag United tonight.

Having not been involved in a competitive fixture at the weekend, this will be Hashtag’s first ever encounter in the Essex Senior League.

Although a large crowd is expected at Tilbury’s Chadfields, where Hashtag will host their home clashes this term, Peek has called on his side to only focus on themselves and not the opposition.

“We are not going to worry too much about them even though it’s their first ever game at this level,” said Peek, whose side suffered a narrow 1-0 defeat to Sporting Bengal United on the opening day of the campaign.

“We need to bounce back from a disappointing performance at the weekend.

“Hashtag are one of the favourites to potentially go up this season and we know they are a good side with a big following.

“But we will only focus on ourselves because we need to pick up some points.”

A solitary goal was enough for Manor to suffer an early setback at the weekend.

And Peek was less than impressed by the display.

The Manor chief added: “We had the boys in for training on Monday night because I was disappointed.

“We hadn’t originally planned to have a training session, but I thought it was what we needed.

“It was frustrating to miss so many chances at the weekend, so we did some shooting and pattern play.

“We also talked about where it went wrong against Sporting Bengal United.

“I know that it will be a very difficult game tonight and we can’t afford to put in a similar performance, so I’m expecting a reaction from the players.”

Having started out on YouTube, Hashtag have gone onto climb the pyramid and boast a healthy fanbase.

But Peek is calling on his players to silence the Hashtag supporters.

“I don’t know an awful lot about them, but they had a decent pre-season and seem to have kept a lot of the group that won promotion last season,” admitted Peek.

“After what happened on Saturday, we have to pick up something because otherwise we are already behind the curve.

“We need to just play our game and not be distracted by the big crowd that will be there.

“If we perform well, I’m confident we’ll get a positive result.”