Colchester United’s youngsters are aiming to book a place in the last four of the Premier League Cup tonight.

And U’s under-23 boss Wayne Brown believes the club’s prosperous Category Two academy is already turning heads within the game.

Colchester travel to play Portsmouth in their quarter-final tie, having already disposed of Sunderland in the previous round and progressed from a group which also included Manchester City, Hull City and Derby County.

The U’s development side have also been picking up positive results in Professional Development League Two, increasing hope of more of their players progressing into the first-team environment as part of the club’s youth pathway.

The likes of Tom Lapslie, Frankie Kent and Cameron James have all impressed for Colchester in the EFL this season having emerged from their youth set-up and boss Brown says people are starting to sit up and take notice.

Brown said: “I hope it gives people on the outside of our environment a bit more awareness of what we’re doing and I hope that we can bring lads into the first team, because that’s the aim.

“We’ve ultimately been little old Col U but with regards to the Academy, we’re starting to turn a few heads because we do things in the right way and that is down to the chairman and the amount of time, effort and investment he has put into it.

“There was a bigger crowd for the Manchester City game and hopefully that helped to put the Academy more on the map.”

Colchester’s under-23s will be looking to continue their impressive Premier League Cup form against Pompey Reserves at Havant and Waterlooville’s Westleigh Park this evening.

The U’s go into the match on the back of a creditable 1-1 draw at Birmingham City, last week.

“The most important thing is that the lads take confidence and encouragement from the last game and take that into the Portsmouth match,” said Brown.

“We reiterated before the Birmingham game that that was our most important match, because it was our next one.

“Now we move onto Portsmouth and we’ve done our homework on them, with regards to the way they play.

“Portsmouth use a lot of their first-team players to get their numbers up at this level and fit friendlies in and around their scheduled games.

“We took a very young under-23 group up to Sunderland for our last game in the competition.

“In the second half, we were hanging on a bit at 1-0 and they wouldn’t be able to replicate that in many games this year, with that backs to the wall environment.

“I hope that we can perform a bit better on the night against Portsmouth.

“But at Sunderland, they did show their no-lose mentality in a game where I don’t think anyone gave us a chance, outside of our walls.”