Jamie Day was pleased to see the changes that he made to his Braintree Town line-up work at Sutton United and hopes others will now be fighting to battle their way back into the team.

It was a much-altered side that started for Braintree with Day making five alterations from the team that had started the 4-1 defeat by Gateshead, but the boss felt they were changes that needed to be made.

He said: “In fairness, anyone could have come out after Saturday’s game.

“I don’t think any of them could have moaned about it if they’d been on the bench, but I wanted to see a bit more pace in there and went with the changes that I did.

“It doesn’t do any harm to shake things up and the players who came out now know they need to fight their way back in.”

Braintree will now be looking to build on their 2-1 win at Sutton, but Day may have a dilemma in the centre of his defence after Jake Goodman went off with a head injury and Ian Gayle was sent off late in the game.

“We’ll have to see whether Jake is fit to play or not,” added Day. “He took a bang to the head and health and safety may say that he’s not able to play.

“You have to take precautions with injuries like that, but we may be a bit stretched in that department as Ian Gayle could be out after getting sent off at Sutton.

“I may look at a loan player, but the trouble with that is that we’ll probably only need someone for one game and we have Jerome Okimo who can play at centre-half.

“It may not be ideal, but I’ll have a look at it.”