Asked if tonight's performance was as bad as things could get for him, Keehan replied, "Well, it's as disappointing as it gets.

"When you're playing from the lower leagues you want to get on top of them early and to be honest the way we started I thought we'd be fine.
"And then you get a freak goal and then we give them another one and then it's an uphill battle.

"The first goal, they didn't mean. He was just going to put a cross in and it's sailed into the far corner, exactly the same as Saturday.
"Rick (Banks) probably should have done better with it – and with the second one. Banksy should have come and cleared it out, he started coming and then stopped for whatever reason and made it easy for him.
"I feel for him. He's absolutely gutted now. He's been one of our better players this season.

"(For Leiston's third goal) he struck it ever so well but we've still given him the opportunity which is basic poor defending
"For all the dominating in the second half you've got to put the ball in the back of the net.

"We obviously had problems beforehand with the amount of players we had out, and we had to bring some youngsters in.

"We ended up being just too lightweight. Too many youngsters and it didn't go to plan.

"Tonight we had players who weren't good enough. We know that but we had seven players missing tonight. And when we've had the problems before we've gone out and got the loan players in and unfortunately we lost them all tonight. And when you add Danny (Cullip) and Michael (Standing) to that – and you've the issue with Chamal where we had to make the decision not to play him – then we have not enough players."

"But I still think we had enough players to win the game tonight but you can't give them an incentive, which we did.

Asked if he felt mounting pressure, he said, "I'm terribly disappointed. There is pressure, but there was pressure before and we went out and got some players in and turned it round. We just need to try and get more players in but it's not easy."

Despite the paltry crowd of 363 – most of whom seemed to have travelled down from Suffolk, there were still plenty of calls for Keehan's head at the end of the match.

He said, "Obviously, you've only got to listen to it. To be immune to listening to it would be difficult. You've got to be a little bit thick-skinned but at the end of the day they want Lewes to win and we didn't. We let them down tonight.

"But we turned it round before and we'll turn it round again.

"We know we have to rely on the loan players and I've spoken to three different managers already about loan players. It's just a case of how generous they'll be.

"We're not the most enticing team to come to at the moment. The trouble with a thin squad is you can't cope with injuries.

"We end up playing Craig Richards who's a centre half who hasn't played for six or seven weeks up front just to give us a bit of a physical threat."

Keehan revealed that left back Aswad Thomas could have played in the FA Cup for Lewes tonight but the decision not to renew his loan contract with Charlton Athletic yet was to avoid him missing league games around the vital festive period.

He also said he was due to talk to Brighton manager Mickey Adams about renewing the loan deals for striker Sam Gargan and winger Jack Compton (who were both barred from playing for Lewes in the FA Cup anyway – Gargan's loan deal ran out last week and Compton's is due to expire next week).

"With Thomas, if we had signed him last Friday we'd have lost him for three games at Christmas, " said Keehan.

"I've got to talk to Micky Adams tomorrow about Gargan and Compton, and I might be talking to him about another player.

"Gargan and Compton wouldn't have played anyway tonight; Thomas would have done."