Jamie Day says it is decision time for the last few members of Braintree Town's squad to make their minds up about whether they want to remain at the club next year.

The new Iron boss is confident that Simeon Akinola, Chez Isaac and Michael Cheek will be with the club next season, but the last couple of weeks have seen the departure of a number of members of last year's squad who secured third place in the Vanarama National League.

That success has seen rival clubs and some further up the tree swoop to entice players away by offering deals that Braintree can't afford to match and Day admits he has been disappointed to see some players go who he would have liked to hold on to.

Players have been offered enhanced deals from the ones they had at Braintree last year and Day has tried to give everyone time to consider their positions, but expects answers from the last few in the next day or two.

Day said: "We've made an offer to Mark Phillips, but he has been on an A licence coaching course and it's very difficult to deal with things because those courses are so intense.

"What he said when we made the offer was that he wanted to go back to his agent to review it and we said we'd catch up after his coaching course this week.

"So I'm not 100 per cent sure on Mark yet.

"We have made an offer, which is more money than last year, but we're giving him another day or so.

"Dan Sparkes, we've give until the middle of the week as he has a Football League club interested.

"I'm keen to keep Dan on board because he's a player I rate very highly, but I know as a player/manager that when you have an opportunity like that, you want to look at it properly, so we gave him a bit extra time until the middle of the week.

"Mitch Brundle was away until Saturday and so we've also given him until the middle of the week to have a think about it, but once again, it is a better offer than last year's.

"I know boys have other offers and we can't match that, but I'm hoping in the next 24 hours we will get a properly clear picture of where we are.

"It would be nice to have that so we could go into the weekend with a couple of signings."