Football Season Guide

Braintree have had a rather quiet pre-season and have focused on keeping the team from last year and adding only one or two signings. The Iron have officially signed up only young former Watford trainee Chez Isaac so far to bolster their midfield and at least one or two more new players should link up before the start of the campaign as the squad numbers are quite low. Alan Devonshire will not be worried too much though as he is a shrewd operator of the loan market and the more important thing for him is that players like Dean Wells, Kenny Davis, Sean Marks and Ryan Peters are all staying put. The platform is there for Braintree to have another great campaign having secured a really good top-half finish last season. They looked like relegation fodder for the first half of the campaign but rallied brilliantly from February onwards and finished the season as one of the teams in best form in the league, even getting a win against the eventual champions Mansfield a week before the end of the season. There is definitely talent and character in this Braintree team and they have the potential to develop too as players like Dan Holman and Alan Massey can surely be stronger and more complete over the upcoming campaign. Thus, Braintree look like a safe bet to finish somewhere in mid-table but may well be a tad lower than i the previous two seasons due to the increasingly stiff competition in the league and the slightly worrying lack of strengthening in the summer by the Iron.