Jamie Day is looking at the squad building task he has at Braintree Town in a positive way as he gets a chance to put his own stamp on the Iron’s “clean sheet”.

While the new boss admitted that it was disappointing to lose a large chunk of the squad that secured a top-three finish in the Vanarama National League last year in the early days of his managerial tenure, he wasn’t prepared to dwell on negatives.

Michael Cheek, Simeon Akinola and Chez Isaac are all expected to return next season, but Matt Fry and Matt Paine have joined Kenny Davis and Sean Marks in confirming they won’t be back this week.

Sam Habergham and Alex Woodyard, who both played for the England C team in their International Challenge Trophy defeat by Slovakia last weekend, are also expected to be taking up offers elsewhere and Day said he thought Taylor Miles would follow former boss Danny Cowley to Lincoln City.

But rather than lose sleep over players who have departed, Day has been putting his energies into assembling a squad that do want to be with the club and Day said it is giving opportunities for new players to write their own bit of Braintree history.

“You have to look at it in a positive way as there’s no point in us being negative,” said Day.

“It gives others an opportunity to step into a club that is playing Conference football and wants to continue being successful at that level.

“What I need to do is get a group of players who I know can play at this level and then get them to gel, but I’m not closing doors on people who I don’t know.

“There will be boys dropping down a league who I may not have seen as much because they’ve been playing at a higher level and they’ll have a point to prove.

“This is an opportunity for players to show what they can do.

“I’m hoping to have three new players in place by Saturday.

"I’ve spoken to a goalkeeper as I feel that it’s important to have a solid keeper there for the whole year, but I think all down the spine of the team is important.

“It needs to be there and I’m after mobile centre halves and some key midfielders as we have lost three in Kenny Davis, Matt Paine and Alex Woodyard.

“We need to fill that gap.

“It’s a strange situation we’re in now as you’d normally be nailing down players in January.

“I’m not knocking anyone and I don’t know why it wasn’t done, but you’d normally expect to have six or seven tied down early in the year and then this time of year would be more relaxed.

“Unfortunately it wasn’t the case and we now have a lot of departures and we’re starting with a clean sheet.

“I’d like to have kept all of them, but when I had the initial chats with them, I felt many of them had half made their minds up already.

“So we were prepared for this to happen.

“It’s disappointing to lose the likes of Matt Paine, Matt Fry, Alex Woodyard and Sam Habergham as they are all good players and key players like Kenny Davis are hard to replace, but it’s now my job to find those replacements.”