John McGreal says he is looking for a response from his Colchester United players when they host Wycombe Wanderers tomorrow.

The U’s head coach was disappointed with his side’s performance in both defence and attack in their 3-1 defeat at Cheltenham Town last weekend and is eager to see a much-improved display against old foes Wycombe.

He said: “We want a bit of a reaction after what happened at Cheltenham.

“The boys know that we need to improve away but we have a home game to try and get three more points.

“We know that we’ve been putting more pressure on ourselves with our away record but we’ve had a good week’s training with the lads and we’re gearing up to what will be a tough game on Saturday.

“It’s a great game and hopefully, there’ll be a half decent crowd and we can put on a good show for our fans.

“We’ve looked at videos of their games and they’ve been performing well but hopefully we can continue our home form tomorrow.

“It’s about us – what we do and what personnel we bring into the team.

“We know that there’s history there against Wycombe and we had good games against them.

“It’s a derby game for the fans but the way we’re looking at it is that it’s the next game to win three points.”

McGreal says it would be foolish for Colchester just to focus on powerhouse Adebayo Akinfenwa tomorrow.

The powerful striker – nicknamed the Beast – is set to line up against the U’s for Wycombe when the two clubs meet at the Weston Homes Community Stadium.

Colchester kept Akinfenwa relatively quiet last season, keeping two clean sheets in achieving a League Two double over the Chairboys.

And McGreal has stressed it would be unwise to throw all of the attention on the former AFC Wimbledon forward.

McGreal said: “I think it would be foolish to just concentrate on Akinfenwa.

“You know that he’s a huge threat but they’ve also got other threats like (Josh) Umerah who they have on loan from Charlton, they’ve got (Paris) Cowan-Hall and they can also change personnel, as well.

"They have players who they can bring into different positions.

“We know they’ll be a threat but while we have to try and look after them, we also have to implement our game.”

Mikael Mandron is suspended for the Wycombe clash following his red card at Cheltenham, with Brandon Hanlan and Drey Wright among the leading contenders to replace him.