BRAINTREE Town played out a 0-0 draw with Ebbsfleet United at the Rare Breed Meat Company Stadium on Bank Holiday Monday, writes DAVID WARD.

Make no mistake, this was two points dropped rather than a point gained for the Iron after a dour, boring match against the National League's bottom team, who had two late clearcut goalscoring chances to seal a shock win.

This was a dreadfully poor performance from Braintree who never looked like breaking the deadlock, despite having the majority of play throughout.

Manager Angelo Harrop has promised he will bring in a couple of new faces this week and it was obvious to the Iron fans in the bumper Bank Holiday 1,314 crowd an all-important clinical finisher is needed.

(Image: JON WEAVER)

Harrop said: "It's really frustrating because I thought we played so well throughout the game, created so many opportunities to score yet in the end we let ourselves down by not being clinical at those crucial last moments.

"We knew it would be a tough, uncompromising game because they are bottom of the league without a point and they put up a strong battle to get something from the game.

"But we should have done better and again we had fantastic support from our fans and I feel for them that we did so well but just could get the ball across the line.

"I think we are step by step establishing ourselves at the top of the non-league pyramid and we know things won't always go the way we want but we are improving and I am confident we are going in the right direction.

(Image: JON WEAVER)

"There's no room for errors or complacency though at this level because you get punished and punished quickly.

"We've plenty to work on before our next game away to Hartlepool on Saturday where we will be looking to get a result and continue to collect points."

Braintree's players worked hard, created good build ups in their play but lacked the killer instinct in the final third and consequently let Ebbsfleet repeatedly off the hook.

Playing Inih Effiong as the front target man was again a disaster.

He was finally substituted just on the hour and is the first Iron player for many years to ever be booed off the park by home fans.

(Image: JON WEAVER)

At least his replacement John Akinde put himself about more and helped create possible chances, late on.

The busy Marley Marshall Miranda hit the crossbar on 66 minutes but that really was as close as the Iron came to scoring.

Had Braintree broken the deadlock in the first half in which they dominated play it would certainly have opened the floodgates and they surely would have gone on to win by a decent margin, because the visitors were that poor.

But winning games at any level is all about scoring goals and that's something the Iron are sadly currently lacking, although on reflection a point was perhaps better than nothing.