Five Takeaways From Braintree

We went to Tuesday's pre-season friendly so you didn't have to

Ahhh, pre-season friendlies. The warm feeling of the first real sign that football is back. The first jolt in the arm after a summer of distracting yourself with all the other things that life can offer. They stoke up the hope and anticipation for the new season, sending the Excite-o-Meter up to 11. Seeing those new signings up close, the new system in action; let’s see what and who I’m investing all my emotion into for the next 9 months and 46+ games then.

That warm feeling, however, could just be the burger and chips washed down with a pitchside lager. As much as going to a pre season friendly or two is always in my summer diary if I can make it work, it didn’t take long when I was surrounded by a calm summer evening hum during a glorified training session to astutely ask myself: “what the fuck am I doing here again?”

Tuesday evening at Braintree Town was an attempt at a fact-finding mission. Or as much as can be possible at what is more commonly called a “workout” than an actual football match. After a summer of recruitment that I’m going to conservatively call “underwhelming” so far, I felt like I needed to lay eyes on this squad in person before starting to cast any unfair judgments. So alongside my trusty pod companion Tom, we did what not many of you (justifiably) wanted to do and headed to Cressing Road (or the Rare Breed Meat Company Stadium as it’s more affectionately known by their supporters now).

On the journey up, we’d discussed what we were most interested in seeing. We both agreed Ben Knight was high on our list after hearing impressive reports from the City friendly. Dom Ball too, although controlling the tempo in these sorts of games is maybe not as impressive as it might be in a league game.

I was also intrigued by Loft and Lavery’s connection; lining up in a traditional Neil Harris 4-4-2 (although with Bradshaw pushing up very high on the left-hand side and then Bennett on the right when he came on to create a bit of a lopsided backline when attacking with lots of focus on overlaps), I was interested to see how your classic big man little man combination might work.

With a smile Tom replied, “That, and I’m interested to see if Braintree is about Loft’s level”. More on that later.

United ran out comfortable 3-0 winners, with goals from Kaikai, Watts and Knight. Aside from a pre-planned Lavery change after 30 minutes, the first set of players got 60 minutes, and were then replaced by the players who have “a history of being more robust” for the last 30, according to Harris. Surprisingly given their respective injury records, those players included Knight and Ball.

Before delving into a few key takeaways, it’s worth stating the obvious: a pre-season friendly on July the 15th is only going to be an indication at most. The caveats are always the same with these games: players are working themselves to full fitness, the manager is testing different systems and combinations, no one wants to get injured so the application is not at the 100% you’d expect it to be when the real stuff starts, and you’re playing much weaker opposition who the above also applies to.

So these are nothing more than a few observations and reflections from the game and the wider state of play at this point in time.

1. Pre-season could have looked so different

As the heavens opened and the wind howled, I walked along the open terrace to the cover of the main stand, clutching a cheeseburger and some chips with curry sauce in one hand, and a £6.50 pint in the other. The unseasonal sodden weather did a good job at putting in stark contrast how different our pre-season schedule could have looked. It’s hard not to cast an eye at social media feeds and see Stevenage in Spain, Notts County in Germany, and Lincoln in Portugal to name a few. Even Curzon Ashton (remember them?) managed a pre-season tour to Murcia in Spain.

There’s no doubt this is coming primarily from a selfish place - I speak for a lot of fans I know when I say we’d love nothing more than a proper pre-season tour with a few friendlies fans can attend. Mainly just for our own enjoyment.

But for me there’s also another angle at play here. Having just been relegated, with general sentiment understandably somewhere between low and cautiously hopeful, a tour and the stories that would have come with it would’ve been a great PR move for the club. It would have not only lifted the mood, but people would be much slower to criticise transfer market performance, or overanalyse friendlies in Essex on a Tuesday in a far too lengthy Substack post if they’d just spent four days on the piss on the Costa Blanca. It would have been a really easy win to win some fan favour back, this summer more than any.

But that’s life, and for this summer Greater Anglia would have to do instead of Ryanair.

2. Newsflash: don’t pin your hopes on Ryan Loft

Talking about the game itself, the answer to Tom’s question on the train earlier is, on this evidence, no. Loft’s level is lower than Braintree.

This isn’t a new point, this is something that had been discussed endlessly last season. But I don’t remember a United player at this point in his career ever getting so much genuine derision. It’s like he’s more of a circus act than a footballer. Look around me in the stand on Tuesday, people laugh at him or are genuinely confused by him, more than they applaud him. At one point in the first half, trying to win the ball in the middle of the park, his solution was to volley the ball with all his might off the pitch and into the trees over the stand. All while facing towards his own goal. To say he lacks a deft touch is the understatement of the century.

I thought there was a chance in these pre-season friendlies we might see Loft impress a bit more against lesser defenders. But his own lack of ability seems impossible to hide. Harris has talked about simplifying his game, and there’s a hope that as a former striker himself he might be able to either coach some technique into Loft or produce a gameplan that uses his physical stature to the squad’s advantage (don’t hold your breath, he’s not even that good at winning flick-ons).

Based on last night, he’s still got a long way to go to prove us all wrong.

3. Ben Knight could be very fun

When Knight was signed, I thought a few members of the pod panel summed it up well: it’s a low-risk no-brainer because of his connection to the club. Imagine if he’d signed for Barnet and scored against us, we’d be up in arms that we hadn’t picked him up.

And from what we’ve seen so far, one thing that is not in question is his quality. We’ll have to add the extra caveat that on Tuesday he came on fresh against defenders with 60 minutes in their legs, but every time he picked up the ball he had a spark about him. Really technical, really expressive, really creative - he could be really fun this year. The tight control and finish for his goal was superb.

4. No closer to that elusive centre forward

Currently we have three strikers: Lavery, Loft, and Kachunga. Lavery’s minutes will be managed all season, I think if things go really well he’ll feature in some capacity in 30 games. As an indication, he’s played a total of 885, 1452, and 1257 league minutes in the last three seasons, an average of 1198, which is just over 13 full 90 minutes. Loft doesn’t need any more analysis. And we’ve seen Kach can be very anonymous - but, under Harris the first time around, we saw him perform really well partnered with Ahadme up front. But it’s a lot to rely on him to do if Lavery isn’t available as much as we expect him to be.

After the game, Harris said we’re not any closer to adding a striker. Whether he’d actually reveal anything in an interview is of course a different question, but the point stands: we’re two and a half weeks away from the season starting, and the striker that we’ve needed since last summer is seemingly no closer. For me, who that name is and what pedigree they have is a huge indicator of how competitive we’ll be this season. As much as Kachunga specifically might prove to be very good for the level, as it stands this isn’t a group that I feel we can rely on - the quality of the fourth is one of the biggest parts of the jigsaw.

You can also apply that around the rest of the squad. It’s fair to say there’ a strong first XI in place, but our centre midfield depth for example currently reads Dom Ball, an injured Korey Smith, and… George Hoddle. By my reckoning we need 5 players across the squad still, minimum.

5. A fair few glimmers of encouragement

Let’s not leave on a negative note. Now’s not the time, the ‘delights’ of Braintree Town’s catering are still too fresh in my memory to be too doom and gloom. And like I mentioned at the top, everyone’s working themselves into fitness, and the standard of these games makes it near impossible to make an accurate judgment call - and transfers is, as always, conjecture, until you’ve seen the team play competitively.

There were also some genuine positives just out of the game itself. Elliot Thorpe, one of the trialists playing out on the right wing looked very lively and contributed well. On that evidence, there’s enough for a contract to help bulk the squad out. I thought Dom Ball showed how he’ll lead the team - in amongst the few tired murmurs of the crowd, when he came on you could clearly hear how he operates in the centre of the park, barking orders and marshalling men around him. That will be important.

And finally, seeing Mamadou Jobe play football again was worth the entrance fee alone. It’s great to have him back, now how’s that long throw holding up?