CHAIRMAN Lee Harding feels Braintree Town could do with going back in time to make sure they can move forward again following their Vanarama National League relegation.

The Iron parted ways with manager Hakan Hayrettin this week after he had been unable to safeguard the club’s position in the top flight of English non-league football and Harding feels they need to move forward quickly.

The announcement of a new manager is expected to be made in the next few days and a source within the club has revealed to the Braintree and Witham Times that a former fans’ favourite player is rumoured to be in the running to take the position.

But whoever comes in at the helm, Harding said they would need to get “back to basics”.

The chairman said that going toe-to-toe with former Football League clubs and their spending power over the last six years had been tough and he felt the club now needed to get back to the ethos of what had taken them up to that level in the first place.

Harding said: “After a couple of managerial resignations and a couple of departures in the last couple of years, we start the process again.

“I’m hoping that the process won’t take long as we want to hit the ground running and we need to move on from there.

“What we need to do is get ourselves back to basics.

“We need to get back to what we had under the likes of George Borg and Alan Devonshire where we had a manager who was given a period of time to build over a few years and time to challenge.

“They need time to build that challenge.

“We don’t have silly money to spend, but it will be a competitive budget next year.

“Our feet are very firmly on the floor and I’m already looking forward to next season and we are making arrangements for pre-season already.

“We are looking to do things the way we used to do.

“Perhaps we have been guilty over the last couple of seasons of believing the propaganda that we could compete on an even keel with clubs with 20,000 all-seater stadiums. With that in mind, to have survived at National League level for six seasons has been incredible, but we need to regroup now and go again.

“We want a bunch of lads who are hard working and who want to be at the club and we want to have a manager who understands our way of doing things.”

The club are organising an open day on Saturday, June 3, when there will be the deadline for discounted season tickets for next year and it will be a chance for fans to meet the new manager and talk about his plans, with pre-season training then starting on June 24.

As well as having a new manager, Harding said he expected a complete overhaul of the playing staff to take place as well.

He added: “None of the players from last year have been offered terms of re-engagement and it’s a clean sheet.

“There are a couple of players who the new man may want to speak to and I’m thinking of the likes of Joe Maybanks, who I consider to be a Braintree success story, but no-one has been offered terms.”

Meanwhile, work is under way to prepare the Ironmongery Direct Stadium pitch for next season.

Harding said: “The surface has already been verti-drained and cross seeded and the top dressing is due to take place either this week or early next week.

“We had the chance of a home pre-season fixture in early July, but we felt that was too soon for the surface so it’s likely that the first home game will now be towards the latter part of July.”