Braintree Town Match Preview

Twerton Park hosts its second home fixture in seven days on Saturday when Braintree Town make the long trip west.

City supporters will be looking for similar winning performances to the two previous outings at HQ against Chippenham and Eastbourne.

And with three away defeats on the road this year, and some tough looking fixtures on the horizon, a win is important to keep in touch with the top half of the table.

Those looking down rather than up will also have noticed that while lowly Braintree currently trail City by 11 points, they do have three matches in hand.

This has been a very difficult season for the Essex club and for some time it has looked highly likely that the single relegation spot will be filled by themselves or neighbours Billericay.

The two have been locked at the bottom for most of the past few months and they have both accumulated only 16 points, although The Iron have played three games fewer. Intriguingly the two meet at Cressing Road on the last day of the season.

In fact Braintree were unbeaten when they hosted City back in September, but two successful penalties converted by Cody Cooke and a third goal from Alex Fletcher sealed a 3-1 win for the visitors.

That defeat heralded a run of seven straight defeats and a place in the bottom three ever since.

Goals have not been a problem recently with ten scored in the past four matches but seven have also been conceded. So perhaps it was no surprise that having taken a 2-0 lead against visitors Welling on Tuesday they conceded two late goals and threw away the opportunity to close the gap on the club immediately above them.

Away from home they have won just the two matches, at Hemel Hempstead back in August and by 4-2 at Hampton & Richmond just seven days before City went down to a heavy defeat at the Middlesex club.

This will be The Iron’s first visit to Twerton since the opening day of the 2019/20 season when goals from Tom Smith and Ross Stearn provided City with a 2-0 win. The match, played on 3 August, was probably the earliest City have ever started a league campaign.

Since our first meeting in 2008 City have won two, drawn three and lost just the single home match to Braintree, all of those fixtures taking place at this level except for one during our second season in the National League.

The Club will be hoping to maintain the very healthy average attendance figures for this match, tickets for which can be bought in advance.