HAKAN Hayrettin won't let his Braintree Town players brood on the errors that cost them in their Vanarama National League defeat by Boreham Wood.

The Iron's 2-1 loss left Hayrettin still looking for his first points as Braintree boss after two games in charge, but other than the two pieces of sloppy play that led to Boreham's goals, he was upbeat about how his team had played, especially in the second half.

They looked lively through their midfield to keep the visitors on the back foot and equalised Boreham's scrappy first-half goal with a wonderful strike from Simeon Akinola.

Another mistake soon after the leveller allowed Morgan Ferrier to snatch what proved to be the winner for Boreham Wood, but Hayrettin won't afford his players time to feel sorry for themselves and wants to focus on the positive play that he saw from them.

“I thought we were the better team in the second half," he said.

“We pushed Boreham back, but we got punished for a silly mistake when we got caught by some static play from two or three of the boys.

“I told them, it’s not because they’re not good players, it’s because they are making these individual errors and they then feel sorry for themselves.

“Well, they haven’t got time to feel sorry for themselves because they’ll be gone, simple as that.

“It was the same for both of the goals – it was criminal.

“If the ball comes into the six-yard box, you have to deal with it.

“It’s bread and butter and it’s not right that we’ve conceded there.

“Having said that, though, I thought the performance overall was fantastic.

“The work rate was better and the boys are now getting to know what we require.

“We’re not a million miles away, but we just have to cut out the mistakes.

“There was a monumental effort to get back in the game, but it was just a silly mistake that cost us.

“You’ll pay the price for them and we have to cut them out.

“When you get back into the game like we did, you can’t afford to make a mistake like that.

“You can’t let a runner go and we’ll have to learn quickly.

“I could stand there and say ‘what’s he done that for?’ but there were more positives than negatives and the effort was fantastic."