The Iron - A Braintree Town Story

The Iron - A Braintree Town Story

35 year old Chris Ball is hired as the new manager of Braintree Town. It's a statement I am proud to hear as I take over at the Essex club, in what I hope will be a long term career taking them up through the English pyramid with the aim to eventually reach the promised land of the Premier League.

The club has been established for well over 100 years, but only have three trophies to their name in their entire history. Four regional league titles and a single National League South win coming in 2011. I'll be looking to change that! Our fiercest rivals are Chelmsford City, due to the close proximity of the two clubs and we will get the chance to play them in the league in my first season in charge. With regards to the club's facilities, they're not the greatest which is to be expected down at this level. I'll be looking to upgrade these as we progress the club throughout the years ahead.

Just as I'll be looking to upgrade myself as, at the moment, I only have a National A License and my previous playing experience as a local pro footballer leaves me with plenty to learn.

Luckily, expectations of the board are not high, with a brave fight against relegation expected this season, and for the next 5 years the board will be happy if we simply stay in the league. Basically, as long as I stay within the wage budget, I should keep the bosses happy.

It's no wonder the board are so lenient with their expectations, as with my appointment as the most inexperienced manager in the league, the club are predicted to finish well adrift of the rest and be relegated. Looks like I'll have my work cut out.

Although I don't think it's just down to my appointment. As I meet my squad, it's clear to see that we are seriously lacking in numbers and my first task is going to be to add some new recruits ASAP before the competitive season gets underwar. With only £500 spare in the wage budget, it's not going to be an easy task to attract any major talent to the club and I will have to be a very shrewd operator in the transfer market for sure.

Any success we will have is likely to be heavily dependent on the performances of central midfielder Alfie Payne. He is easily our best player and I'll be looking to build our team around the 21 year old!

We know we're not going to get the best players to sign for this club. After a few free transfer attempts of what I'd class to be 'good' players at this level, it was clear to see that most don't want to play for me as an inexperienced manager or don't want to play for Braintree as a club that is apparently destined for the drop! So instead, we will have to turn our attention to players that are not so great (to make up the numbers) and the hope our best players can shine, or maybe some youngsters on loan that won't be getting regular football at their own club...

Kai Lissimore fits that latter bill perfectly. At 17, Kidderminster clearly don't have any plans for him this season, but he can add something to our squad and will get his chance to show what he can do for us. He has decent passing ability and the vision to pick out a half decent pass and when he plays, we'll look to him to get those through balls out wide or up to the strikers to create chances. Kai comes in on loan for the season and we won't pay anything towards his deal or wages.

Another youngster that joins on loan for the season ahead is Joe Rabbetts. He comes in from Aldershot in the National League and likely to be our number one left back. He has some decent pace to get up and down the left wing and I’ll be looking for him to whip in plenty of crosses for the front men. We won’t pay anything towards Joe’s wages for the duration of this deal.

A second youngster joined us on loan for the season from Aldershot in the form of winger, Dan Jones. The 19 year old should provide a threat down the right side and I expect him to provide a little flair to the team, getting beyond his man and whipping plenty of crosses into the box. He has the potential to get more assists than anyone this season if he can establish himself as a first team regular. As with our other loan deals, we won’t have to contribute any financials to this deal.

My next signing was my first permanent one for the club. Elliott Andrew has come through the youth at a much higher level with Nottingham Forest, but the 19 year old striker was released by them at the end of last season. I have happily snapped him up and made him the highest paid player at the club on £300 per week, hoping he will be able to be our main goalscoring this season.

Back to the loan market and our next season long loan is 19 year old full back, Huseyin Biler, who joins from AFC Wimbledon. We needed cover in the full back position and Biler was the best available on the loan market who would actually join us.

Another area we needed to improve and find cover was at centre back and we have an experienced head through the door on a free transfer in amongst all the youngsters. Michael McGrath is a good addition and will surely play a big part in our season, providing his age doesn’t catch up with him and he stays relatively injury free.

In amongst all the transfer business, we have so far played three friendlies and recorded three wins. However, I wouldn’t have expected anything less as all our opponents have been from lower divisions.

The tactic I have come up with that best suits my players and the style I want to play down at this level is a 4-2-4 wide. The aim here is to keep a solid back 4, without leaving ourselves too open, have two solid central mids to win and keep the ball. Get the ball, get it wide, whip in the crosses and the strikers score…it’s a simple theory for a team that is devoid of individual outstanding talent. We will kick off the season with a cautious approach based on who we are playing, but I will change the mentality throughout the campaign depending our opponents game by game. With such a weak side though, I predict I’ll mostly be using cautious and balanced to start games off.

We were handed the toughest possible fixture to kick off our league campaign as we took on the title favourites. When we went 2-0 down inside the opening 15 minutes, I have to admit I feared the worst and thought we might get an opening day thrashing! However, my lads grew into the game and we slowly started to take control of things in the possession department and were quickly creating chance after chances. We were back in the game on 54 minutes when Dejon Noel-Williams headed in from an Alfie Payne free kick. Alfie Payne was the provider again for centre back Kyran Clements to level things up for us with 16 minutes to go. We thought we’d actually won the game at the death when Noel-Williams hammered home with just seconds remaining, only for the linesman to rule the goal out for offside.

After the Ebbsfleet game, I was able to announce a new signing. It is another season long loan deal which won’t cost us anything as we add 18 year old striker, Kylian Kouassi to the side. He joins from Sutton United and will come here with a point to prove, having not yet made a senior career experience. His signing was essential as before he joined, I only had two recognised strikers in the side.

Our second league game provided our first victory of the campaign as came away from Hungerford with all 3 points. Dejon Noel-Williams picked up where he left off against Ebbsfleet, bagging another two goals here, and his form already looks like it will be crucial for us this season.

And we made it back to back wins as we beat Havant & Waterlooville in our next game. We were largely outclassed for long periods of this game and our opponents managed 22 shots at our goal. However, our cautious, counter attacking approach worked down to a tee and we took our chances well to steal a victory. It was good to see Kouassi getting on the scoresheet on his first start for the club.

It took 4 games for us to taste defeat for the first time this season, but if I’m being honest then I expected it to have come a lot quicker. Our game against Billericay was close though and either team could have walked with the points on the day…we certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves here.

It’s always a good test of the squad’s mental strength to see how they react after our first defeat and to be fair my lads reacted extremely well here. We dominated proceedings against Oxford and can count ourselves very unlucky not to come away with all 3 points…only a last minute worldie from our opponents denied us the victory.

Still, I don’t think anyone expected us to be in the playoff spots after the opening 5 games! A fantastic start!

Dulwich Hamlet are one of the bigger clubs in this division and more cash rich than most, with some talented players. So going away to them, I expected a really tough game. What I didn’t expect was to give them a footballing lesson as we cruised to our biggest win of the season so far! We were awesome in every department!

Our first venture into this season’s FA Cup saw us take on lower league club, Lancing, in the 2nd Qualifying Round. We got off to a flying start with Noel-Williams handing us the lead as early as the 9th minute, when he slotted past an onrushing keeper after being put through on goal by Kylian Kouassi. Gianni Crichlow bagged his first goal for the club just before half time to double our lead with a headed effort from a corner, before scoring again with a powerful effort after the break. Then a double from striker, Elliott Andrew, off the bench sealed an easy win.

Back in the league, two set piece goals in the first 8 minutes (one pen and one free kick) from Alfie Payne put us in charge of the game against Welling early on. They didn’t offer much after that and their goal was even against the run of play.

Our flying start to the season has continued and through October it was good enough to earn me my first ever Manager of the Month award.

The Manager of the Month award is notorious for cursing a manager and his team in their next match and we hoped that wouldn’t be the case as we found ourselves back in FA Cup action against more lower league opposition, this time in the form of Kingstonian. But that’s exactly what happened as we suffer a very disappointing defeat and there will be no dream FA Cup run for us this season.

However, we quickly recovered from that defeat as we went on to record 4 wins in a row in the league, conceding only a single goal in the process.

It is a run of form that has taken us to the top of the division!

And also wins me back to back Manager of the Month awards too!

Our defence is proving to be extremely solid so far this season and at the heart of that is Kyran Clements, who is proving to be an absolute beast for us with an average rating of 7.69 in all comps so far this year!

Only our very own Alfie Payne has a better average rating in the league than him!

In amongst all that action, there was another new arrival at the club. We are only allowed 6 long term loans (over 3 months) per season, but needed additional cover on the wings. I have therefore moved to bring in 20 year old Harvey Grice from Alfreton on a loan deal for just 3 months. We won’t contribute anything financially and I’m not sure how much he will play, but it is another body in the squad.