Braintree Town are desperate to avoid becoming a yo-yo club between the top two levels of non-league football, as they prepare to welcome Barrow AFC to Cressing Road tomorrow.

The Iron were promoted back to the National League at the first attempt last season after beating Hampton & Richmond Borough on penalties in a play-off final.

They were the first team to make the most of the new system in the play-offs, as they went up after finishing sixth in the National League South table, something that wouldn’t have been possible under the old structure.

While in their previous spell in the fifth tier of English football, they punched above their weight under the management of Danny Cowley, but they’ve found this campaign to be a real struggle and they head into tomorrow’s match bottom of the table.

They are seven points adrift of safety, although they’ll feel they should have narrowed the gap on Tuesday night, when they allowed a two-goal lead to slip away in their 2-2 draw at home to Sutton United.

Manager Hakan Hayrettin told the Braintree and Witham Times: “I look at what the players are giving me and there are no complaints from me.

“What I’m looking for now is three points against Barrow and to get that we need the same intensity, the same level of performance and same belief that we had on Tuesday, but eradicate the errors that cost us at the end.”

Hayrettin is in his second spell in charge at the Iron after replacing Brad Quinton in October, initially on an interim basis before the appointment was made permanent last month.

The former Barnet and Wycombe midfielder is trying to achieve he couldn’t manage during his previous time at Cressing Road two seasons ago: keep Braintree in the division.

Barrow have beaten them on their own patch twice, including their last visit to Essex in April 2017, where goals from Byron Harrison and Akil Wright gave them a 2-0 victory.