"I'm confident they will" - Lakeland backs his Town side to put in improved performance at Wealdstone

The Shaymen got their season off to the worst possible start with a 3-0 defeat at Braintree last weekend.

Lakeland said there was a mixed bag of performances from his side, but expects an improvement at Wealdstone.

"I thought there were some very good individual performances, I felt there were some that were below-par and of course, individual errors and lapses in concentration have cost us dearly," he said.

"It's moments in the game that have cost us at Braintree.

"We conceded after two minutes and then had a 30 minute spell where we were in control of the game, doing a lot of positive things.

"Then we concede a really sloppy second goal, and then have another spell just before half-time and probably 25 minutes at the start of the second-half where, again, we did a lot of positive things, we were in control of the game, we carved open a few reasonable opportunities.

"And then we go and concede a really sloppy third goal, which took the game away from us.

"It's important we don't just focus purely on the scoreline. We've obiously got to rectify that, we can't be conceding goals in the manner we did.

"We've discussed that, the players have taken it on board and trained well and it's up to, not just the team, but the individuals within the team, to perform better on Saturday and I'm confident they will."

Lakeland said positives and negatives from Saturday's season-opener have been aired and, hopefully, ironed out.

"You've got to analyse, reflect and have honesty and self-awareness of where your shortcomings have been," he said.

"There's got to be that level of criticism at aspects of our performance, but we've also got to highlight some of the positive work we did as well.

"Monday morning gave us an opportunity to do all those things and watch the game back at length, discuss what we did well and what we need to do better.

"That's behind us now and we hope we learn from it."

When asked what he feels Town need to do better at Wealdstone, Lakeland said: "We need to defend our box better, we need to stop balls coming into the box and on top of that, we need to have that little bit of quality and execution in the final third.

"A lot of our play, in terms of our control and the way we worked the ball into the final third and attacking areas against Braintree, was very good and very positive.

"But when we got into that final third, some of our decision-making and execution at times wasn't to the level we needed it to be to ask more questions of their goalkeeper.

"So there's quite a lot of things we need to improve on but even if the result was different at Braintree, we're still very early on in the process with a very new team and we've got a lot of work to do and a lot of improving to do.

"And we'll be working hard to do that."

Saturday's hosts got off to a winning start last weekend, beating newly-promoted Truro City 2-0 at home.

"Another very difficult game, they've had a very good start, winning the opening game of the season," said Lakeland.

"They play a certain brand of football, they like to build out from the back and try to play through the thirds.

"They've got good athleticism and height in the team, so it's going to be difficult.

"But we'll go there hoping to perform better than we did at Braintree and if we do, we're hoping we can come away with some points on the board."