Tom Lapslie believes a good run in this season’s Carabao Cup can help complement Colchester United’s League Two campaign.

The U’s head to play Cheltenham Town tonight in their first-round tie on the back of a good start to their league programme, where they have taken four points from a possible six.

Now the attention switches to the cup, where Colchester will be aiming to secure their first win in the competition since winning 3-0 at Hereford United, back in 2010.

And after losing out to higher-placed opposition at this stage in each of the last four seasons, midfielder Lapslie says tonight represent a good chance for them to progress.

Lapslie told the Daily Gazette: “You can’t beat a nice cup run – it can keep you ticking over in the league as well sometimes, with the momentum you can gain from it.

“We’ll be looking to progress in the cup as well and any chance you have to do that, you have to take it.

“We’re up against someone in our league and that gives us a good opportunity to progress.

“I want to try and win every single game, whether it’s against Cheltenham in the cup, Port Vale in the league or Tottenham in the FA Cup.

“Let’s see how we go – no disrespect to Cheltenham but they’re not in the same league as Brighton and Villa are and we feel it’s a very winnable game.

“We went into those two previous games (against Brighton and Villa) as massive underdogs and I thought we gave a good account of ourselves in both games, despite the results.

“We know Cheltenham are a good side but we want to go there and win.”

Colchester will travel to Cheltenham in confident mood, after beating Port Vale 2-0 last weekend to follow up their encouraging opening-day draw at Notts County.

“It was a good point away at Notts County but we said afterwards that it would only be a good point if we beat Port Vale, so it’s a great start to the season,” said Lapslie.

“It’s a platform to build on, for the rest of the season.

“We came out of the traps early against Port Vale and played well.

“We scored early and I think that was the key to our success here, a couple of years ago where we came out early doors and scored goals.

“We maybe didn’t do that as much last year as we’d have liked but hopefully the performance against Port Vale was the sign of things to come.

“We could have killed the game off in the second half with the chances that we had and it might have been three or four but it didn’t happen and we did really well to get the three points and the clean sheet.”