John McGreal says his Colchester United squad are in buoyant mood after claiming three straight wins in League Two.

The U’s have won three league games in a row for the first time since December 2016 following their 2-1 triumph at Forest Green Rovers.

Colchester have closed the gap on the play-off places to four points, with five games remaining and host leaders Accrington Stanley on Saturday.

U’s head coach McGreal said: “We’ve hit a bit of form of late.

“We’ve won games of football and the team is playing with a little bit of freedom.

“It’s a buoyant and fearless group at the moment but 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.”

Drey Wright gave Colchester the lead after just 19 seconds, on their first-ever trip to Forest Green.

And despite Reuben Reid equalising from the penalty spot before half-time, Ben Stevenson’s well-taken goal secured a deserved win for the U’s at the New Lawn, to make it ten points from a possible 12 in their last four games.

McGreal added: “I was really pleased with the effort that the boys put in.

“After a performance against the top of the league side (Luton) on a really heavy pitch last Friday to get the points, we lost a couple of bodies for this match and had to change things around.

“But for Brandon Comley and Courtney Senior to come here and put in the shift that they did was fantastic and it was a fantastic effort to get the three points.

“Forest Green had won their last six out of seven and have big threats throughout the team.

“We got a fantastic goal early on – it was definitely the quickest goal that we’ve scored in my time since I’ve been here.

“We should have got another couple to be fair and 2-0 would have been a better scoreline. We then gave a soft penalty away – a ball into the middle of our box and then we’re on the stretch.

“We went 2-1 up early in the second half but we should be putting the game to bed and going 3-1 or 4-1 up with the opportunities we had.

“We knew that they would come at us because they needed the win just as much as we did but it was a really good all-round away performance.”