Woking manager Neal Ardley admitted his side were well below their best after they slipped to a 1-0 defeat at home to Braintree Town in the National League.

The Cards started the match sluggishly at the Laithwaite Community Stadium and never really recovered as they fell to defeat at home to the Iron.

“It was an uncharacteristically slow start from us,” said Ardley.

“We lacked energy in our work at the top end of the pitch and we lacked cohesion at the back.

“The more the game went on in the first half the more strange decisions we made – I thought we started to play with anxiety.

“Rightly so the crowd weren't happy with what they were seeing – we weren't happy either.

“We started to make strange decisions and we put Braintree in on goal two or three times.

“We weren't winning headers at the back and we weren't holding the ball up up top – when you do that it's very tough.

“It's hard to explain – I thought we played with anxiety as the game went.

“We started slowly and I told the boys we lost the game because of the way we started.

“We found ourselves 1-0 down and were all over the shop. No one was playing with any composure or quality.

“We tried to change things around with different shapes and different systems to see if we could engineer something, but it was not enough.

“It all stems from the start of the game – I thought we set our tone at the start and we never got going from there.

“It’s disappointing because I don't know where it's come from.

“We had one defeat in 12 in the league before the game and hadn't played like that in any of the games, but we need to correct our home form – it hasn't been good enough.

“There's no hiding place – we've been in all over Christmas and for all the efforts of being away from your family and being in and doing your work we haven't got the points total we should have.

“We should have beaten Eastleigh, but we didn't, and we were under par against Braintree.

“We made it very hard for ourselves because we didn't start the game properly.

“I can only tell the truth – I always try to be honest and truthful.

“It's not shapes or systems – we changed systems three times during the game and never got anything better from the team than we did from what we started with.

“It was personnel, quality, energy, and I thought a little bit of anxiety. We have to change that and we have to freshen our minds up and go again.

“We need to take the club forward – we're competitive but we're not competitive enough or fluent enough for me at the moment.

“We have to improve on that – I'll keep working at that side of things and see whether we can get back to an unbeaten run.

“It was under par against Braintree and we've got to sort our home form out.

“We've been excellent away from home but at home for whatever reason we haven't quite got our home form going.”