Owen Garvan admits Colchester United face a huge battle to avoid relegation following their 3-0 reverse at Scunthorpe United.

The U’s are now seven points adrift of safety in League One after they crashed to defeat at Glanford Park and have now not won in 14 league matches.

Colchester conceded three times in the space of eight second-half minutes to lose and playmaker Garvan says they must start winning soon to get out of trouble.

Garvan said: “We’re capable of going on a run and what everyone is hoping for is that first win.

“Since the manager has been here we’ve had a couple of draws and some losses – we’ve been in games but haven’t been on the right side of results.

“We need to get one win and then hopefully we can get on a bit of a roll but talk is cheap.

“We’ve given ourselves one hell of a task to get out of the situation that we’re in now.

“People have got to realise the predicament that we’re in at the moment.

“We have to win a lot of football matches to stay in the league.

“It’s a little while now until our next league game; we have to go on a run, whether it’s battling our way through games or go expansive and try to out-football teams.

“At the moment, we’ve tried both and neither seemed to work.

“We have to roll our sleeves and show the manager that as players, we want to work hard and get good performances.”

Garvan admitted Colchester collapsed after conceding on the hour mark at managerless Scunthorpe.

Tom Hopper put the Iron in front and Paddy Madden score twice more in quick succession, to leave the U’s with no way back.

“It was 50-50 and there was nothing in the game - the problem is that we went 1-0 down and fell to pieces after that,” added former Ipswich Town and Crystal Palace midfielder Garvan.

“The first goal went in and we crumbled from there on in, to be honest.

“It could have been five or six after that and too many people let their heads go down and went through the motions.

“At the moment, as soon as one goal goes in I think there are a lot of people who think we’re not going to get back in the game, which isn’t good.”