Hakan Hayrettin apologised to Maidstone fans and said he was embarrassed by their performance against Braintree.

Maidstone lost 2-0 at home to a struggling Iron team who deserved just their fourth win of the National South season.

Both goals - Arjanjit Krasniqi’s free-kick and a Scott Rendell own goal - came in the first half as United left themselves with too much to do after the break.

“I think first half we let ourselves down,” said Stones boss Hayrettin.

“It’s all well and good accepting the accolades when we do well but the first-half performance wasn’t acceptable.

“A few of our players let themselves down tonight.

“The second half was better but the damage had already been done.

“That’s probably the worst performance of the season in terms of the way we went about our business in the first half and we paid the price.

“I don’t want to go back to the days when I first came here and I was pulling my hair out.

“I want us to be a team known for consistency and tonight in the first half we weren’t.

“Fair play to them, they were organised, strong, resilient and they got their rewards but not good enough by my team tonight. It’s very frustrating and it just shows me that we’ve got more work to do.

“I still think we’ve got an excellent chance of doing well in this league but that performance in the first half was nowhere near it.

“To a man they were better than us all over the park.

"It’s the first time I’ve said to them I feel embarrassed that you’ve done that. You’ve let yourselves down.

“I want to apologise to the supporters because they’ve bought that and they’ve thought, ‘What are we watching? This isn’t the team we’ve got to know.’”

Hayrettin also looked at himself after his decision to drop left-back Noah Chesmain led to an unfamiliar back four.

With Jaydn Mundle-Smith covering Chesmain, Gavin Hoyte moved into the middle alongside George Elokobi and Charlie Seaman dropped to right-back.

“In my opinion I thought maybe it’s time to take Noah out for a while because he wasn’t having the best of times,” said Hayrettin.

“I didn’t expect Charlie Seaman to put in a performance like that, I don’t know what he thought he was doing.

“People think that’s his natural position, I play him one up because I think it isn’t, but that’s me.

“Hoytey’s played centre-half before.

“Sometimes you’ve got to take people out of the equation because they’re not having a good time and the last two games Noah hasn’t played well in my opinion.

“I’ve got someone in (Mundle-Smith), he can play centre-back and left-back but obviously the selection may not have been right because we lost 2-0.”

• Match report: Maidstone 0-2 Braintree

• Casey wants to complete season

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