Chairman Lee Harding said it wasn’t just Braintree Town’s lowly position in the Vanarama National League table that lay behind the decision of the club’s board to part company with Jamie Day.

Day left his role as first-team boss in the wake of the Iron’s 1-0 defeat by Forest Green Rovers last weekend and departed with them sitting in 22nd spot in the relegation zone after securing just two wins and three draws from their 12 games so far.

But while the team are only two points from safety and six points off 15th-placed Chester, Harding said the board had been concerned by performances, particularly recent home ones that had led to heavy losses.

Harding said: “Jamie didn’t have a lot of luck, but he did everything he could and I can’t criticise him at all.

“However, it was a situation that we had been discussing for a while because there were concerns there.

“It wasn’t just results but some of the performances as well.

“We saw it at home against Torquay and Gateshead and those sorts of performances were ringing alarm bells.

“Conceding goals like we were at home is not good – you don’t want that in your back yard.

“We did see the win at Sutton and perhaps should have got something from Chester, but we talked about the situation long and hard after the Chester game.

“The Forest Green Rovers performance was then a bit subdued in the first half and having gone a goal down, we just couldn’t break them down.

“Simply looking at it from a maths point of view, we are in the bottom three. Yes, we are in touch with the sides above, but we need to see a reaction that will get us away from trouble and with five defeats from the last seven and just two wins all season, we weren’t sure we would be doing that quickly enough.

“Also we have the FA Cup coming up, which is a competition that is important to us and we wanted to be in a better situation heading into that.”

Day took charge of the side in difficult circumstances over the summer, with only three members of last year’s squad that finished third in the league staying put and he had to rebuild a group of players and get them to gel as a team.

Harding said he appreciated the size of the task that Day had and was grateful for the work he had done for the club as manager, but the feeling among the board was that a fresh approach was needed.

“Jamie has worked very hard for us,” added the chairman.

“I can’t fault or criticise what he has done other than the players that he’s brought in and the teams he’s put out haven’t won enough games.

“Had we won perhaps two more games then I think we’d be more comfortable with that, but looking back at the Torquay and Gateshead games, we were poor and alarm bells were ringing.

“Jamie has had a good go and given it his all and had he inherited the side that the Cowleys (Danny and Nicky) did, then I have no hesitation in thinking he would have had as much success as they did.

“I have a lot of time for Jamie, but how long do you leave it? Eastleigh acted after four games and Tranmere are in the play-offs and still acted, but we’ve held fire to give Jamie a bit of time.

“We were keen to give Jamie as much time as possible, but we had to have belief that progress was being made and the performances against Torquay and Gateshead suggested that we were going the wrong way.

“We felt we hadn’t seen sufficient improvement to think that we would be going into games with confidence that we could win them.

“Since coming up into the National League, the club have had a couple of seasons where we have been going for the play-offs, a couple of top-half finishes and one in Alan Devonshire’s last year in charge where we had a poorer season to finish 14th.

“In that time, we’ve had teams struggling at the wrong end of the table and been bottom at times, but there was always the belief that we could turn it around and get out of trouble.

“However, now we just felt that it was time for a fresh approach.”