Colchester United look set to bolster their ranks today in the aftermath of their opening-day defeat at Accrington Stanley.

The U’s are close to making one signing and could add another, in the wake of Tom Eastman’s ankle injury in their 3-1 reverse at the Wham Stadium.

Colchester are close to sealing one new face on loan and could be prompted to add to their defensive options after Eastman went off at Accrington, with captain Luke Prosser still sidelined and Alex Wynter having left the club by mutual consent.

U’s head coach John McGreal said: “We’re close to bringing someone else in and we’ll see what happens on Monday.

“We’ll have to look at what’s happened with Tom, because we don’t know how long we might have lost him for.

“We’re a work in progress.

“We’re a young team and we have to work with the players that we’ve got and maybe add one or two more, if we can.”

McGreal revealed he received abuse from a handful of Colchester supporters as he walked from the pitch in the aftermath of their defeat at Accrington.

Goals from Kayden Jackson, Billy Kee and Omar Beckles put Stanley in charge in the league curtain-raiser, before substitute Sammie Szmodics netted a late consolation for the U’s.

“The majority of the fans have been fantastic,” said McGreal.

“But I had my dad and my brothers in with the fans and a handful have given me abuse in front of my family, which you have to take on the chin.

“It’s the first game – it’s a bitter defeat because you always want to get something out of it.

“Did we deserve anything out of it on the overall balance? Probably not but we can’t forget about the chances that we had.

“We’re not the smallest team, with the personnel we have.

“But they have a lad up front who backs in well and set-pieces were a little bit of a problem for us, which we need to address.

“It’s about taking responsibility and if you mark your man, you mark him.

“There was some good play in between especially in the second half.

“We threw a little bit of caution to the wind and made our subs early to try and make a statement in the game.

“We’ll try and build on the second-half performance but I’m disappointed for the supporters that have come here that we haven’t got the result we wanted.”