PHUKET: The losses kept coming for Phuket FC tonight as the island team went down 1-0 to cellar-dwellers Rayong FC.

After last week's 5-1 thumping by Sri Racha FC, Phuket's coaching and management staff will be in crisis mode this week.

Sri Racha was in twelth position and the team that infliced tonight additional pain was sitting in seventeenth spot.

For a club sitting in eighth but with aspirations to promotion, these are losses that players and fans do not wish to endure.

The penalty that became the final scoreline was sealed before halftime tonight.

At home next Saturday comes a game against trat FC, which also sits below Phuket at present on the Division One ladder.

Crowds at Surakul Stadium, the home ground in Phuket City, have never exactly been gentle with losing coaches and the record of Brazilian coach Teco has not been encouraging since his appointment in early August.

Perhaps that's why Phuket FC chairman Pamuke Acariyachai was so keen earlier in the week to boost Phuket FC's important role in leading sports development on the island.

Unlike the few hot-headed fans who have been instrumental in Phuket having seven coaches come and go in a hurry in just two years, Khun Pamuke is a builder.

He says the campaign to win promotion to Premier League wil take two or three years. Last season, Phuket narrowly avoided relegation.

This season, Khun Pamuke is hoping Phuket will finish fifth, just below the top clubs. But he did say that before tonight's loss.

By creating a new training facility and linking up with a brazilian club capable of fast-tracking Phuket FC's development, Khun Pamuke is orchestrating all the right moves.

In January, he said this week, a strategic blueprint for Phuket FC's pathway to promotion should be set out. We hope the Phuket fans, good losers that they have to be for now, show a little patience.