Nerves have been tested and finger nails gnawed once too often for St Albans City’s manager Ian Allinson after another come-from behind success at home to Braintree Town was needed to make it four victories in a row.

City trailed at half-time thanks to a second-minute opener from former centre-half Josh Hill.

But two strikes from Sam Merson after the break, the winner just five minutes from full-time kept City’s promotion charge moving forward.

But Allinson would like a life a bit more ordinary.

“We just make life very hard for ourselves,” he said. “We’ve spoken to the players about not giving teams a start but within a minute they put it into the box and I don’t know if Josh meant to score but it’s ended up going in off the back post.

“It really put us on our heels and although we had lots of possession, we never really hurt them.

“It was all side to side and they were happy to get everybody behind the ball.

“And Dean [Snedker] has had to make a good save just before half-time to keep us in the game.

“A lot of it is our own fault, we’re starting games a bit sloppy and a bit slow and we’re doing things in the wrong areas at the wrong times.

“It’s frustrating at times. We’re banging our heads against a brick wall and although they’re a young side, they have got to take information on board and be a little bit more professional in what we’re trying to get across to them, especially in some of these games because there are such small margins in them.

“But the longer the game went on we started to dominate, we started to push them back further and further and get the midfielders playing in different areas and put balls into different parts of the pitch.

“And then we got a fantastic first goal from Merse and the second was even better; the move, the ball from Kieran and the finish from Sam.

“In the end we probably had more chances than them and the fitness came through.”

He took time out to praise goalscorer Merson, who ended a relative barren spell having not found the net since a double against Dartford in February.

Allinson said: “That’s what Sam is like. When he’s hot, he’s very hot and when he goes cold we have to move him around and drop him out some times.

“He’s had a chest infection and that laid him low for two weeks but it was the right decision to play him today.

“We were to far away from him in the first half and in the second we got a lot closer to him and put different balls into him “from different angles.

“And that’s where he becomes a pest and he causes teams problems, looking to get across defenders.”