McGreal not setting targets after Colchester close on play-offs

Posted Tuesday, April 03, 2018 by PA

John McGreal is not yet entertaining any thoughts of Colchester reaching the play-offs, despite his side moving within four points of the top seven with a 2-1 win at Forest Green.

The Us went ahead just 16 seconds in through Drey Wright and though Reuben Reid levelled from the penalty spot, Ben Stevenson’s goal early in the second half proved to be Colchester’s winner.

“We’ve won games of football and the team is playing with a little bit of freedom,” McGreal admitted after a third straight victory.

“I don’t want to take that away by hitting them with targets. We know that we have the top-of-the-league team in Accrington coming to us on Saturday and that’s our only target at the moment.

“We’re looking to try and improve on what we did last season by winning games of football.

“We’ve hit a bit of form and now we need to recover to go again for this coming Saturday.

“I thought the back four were outstanding. We lost a couple of important bodies after an excellent victory over Luton Town on Friday.

“Forest Green are fighting for their lives but have won six out of their last seven home games and we have a lot of respect for Mark Cooper and his team.

“We should have scored a few more but we gave a soft penalty away, a ball into the middle of our box.

“We should have put the game to bed, we know they have Christian Doidge but I thought we contained him well when he came on and defended really well in the last 25 minutes.”

Forest Green were undone by early goals in either half and that infuriated their boss Cooper.

“We can’t concede at the start of each half,” he said.

“We turned it into an uphill battle, so we need to take more responsibility.

“Bearing in mind Colchester played on Good Friday, we worked for two days to drum it into the boys to have a fast start.

“They have had a long coach journey and we wanted to get after them, but we’re a goal down after 17 seconds because we do not do our jobs properly.

“We are too deep for the first one and then the second one my left-back Dan Wishart fails to block the ball forward and their man runs 20 yards forward and shoots off the post.

“We got back into the game before the break and I thought we could go on and win it in the second half but we get caught again.

“We need to take more responsibility and we have a really big game at Barnet on Saturday.”