Sam Walker admits Colchester United’s players have some “real hard thinking” to do in the aftermath of their demoralising 3-0 home reverse against Leyton Orient.

The U’s crashed to a heavy home defeat at the hands of their fellow strugglers and have now not won in their last nine league matches, dropping to third from bottom in the League Two table.

Walker is confident Colchester can turn their fortunes around – but the U’s goalkeeper admits they must improve quickly if they are not to be drawn into yet another relegation battle.

Walker said: “This is a big issue now – we’ve not won for a long time, we’re sliding down the league and something has to change very quickly.

“We have to deal with what went wrong (against Leyton Orient), move on and go again and get ourselves out of this hole that we’re in.

“We have to have some real hard thinking about where we’re at as individuals and as a team and deal with it and move on.

“We’re all hurting and we have to have a long, hard think about not just this game but the last couple of months, where we haven’t got the results.

“We have to pick ourselves up and there are still 30-odd games to go.

“There’s plenty of time left to turn it around and I firmly believe we will.

“We have the spirit and the belief in this group to do that and it’s only a matter of time.

“But we have to turn it around soon otherwise we’ll be in a relegation battle and that’s the harsh truth of it.

“No-one wants that again and we’ve been dealing with that for the last few seasons at the club.

“When we came down, a lot of people including myself saw it as an opportunity for us to look at the right end of the table and challenge at the top but that’s not happening at the moment.

“But there’s still a long way to go and I still believe we’re capable of doing that but we certainly need to get out of this run very quickly, otherwise it’s looking pretty bleak.”

Colchester fell behind to Jay Simpson’s 11th-minute opener and Nicky Hunt doubled Orient’s lead less than a minute after half-time, before Simpson wrapped up the visitors’ big win midway through the second half, in front of a bumper crowd of more than 7,000.

“It wasn’t good enough and there are no excuses,” added Walker, who has started every league game for Colchester this season.

“We conceded at poor times and didn’t take the chances when they came to us and we’ve been deservedly beaten.

“After the first goal, we still had a lot of the game to go to get back in but the second goal was a real sucker punch, so soon after half-time.

“We had a big team-talk at half-time and said we were going to take the game to them but then they scored again within a minute of the restart.

“That isn’t good enough for us and we also missed chances at crucial times, especially the one just before half-time.

“Both boxes have cost us again.

“We all realise that it was a big game for the club, in terms of the attendance and there were a lot of kids here from local football teams.

“Everyone was hoping that we’d put on a show and got a result for the club but it hasn’t worked out that way.”