Braintree Town manager Danny Cowley admitted that he had to rein in his natural desire to go on the offensive against Wrexham to make sure he played to his team’s strengths.

Taylor Miles’ stunning free-kick earned the Iron all three Vanarama National League points ahead of Saturday’s visit of Chester to the Avanti Stadium (kick-off 3pm).

It ended a run of four straight defeats when Braintree hadn’t registered a goal, but the victory was underpinned by another solid defensive display that gave them a 13th clean sheet of the campaign.

“When you haven’t scored for four games, you are very aware of it as a manager,” said Cowley.

“You don’t want to make too big a thing of it as you can affect players’ confidence.

“I’d like to have played two or even three up front, but we knew we wouldn’t out-score Wrexham.

“If we’d gone into it trying to out-score them we would have got beaten.

“So we had to play to our strengths and they are our discipline, our defensive organisation and really our substance.

“We are a determined group and we want to win things so I’m really pleased.

“I said after Forest Green (last wekeend) that we will lose games because we are a little short of quality and Saturday was probably an example of that.

“But I will always sleep easy if I know I’ve got a group who will give me everything.”