Colchester United head coach John McGreal admits he is keeping his cards close to his chest when it comes to revealing his starting line-up for the new season.

The U’s boss will run the rule over his players for a final time in pre-season when they host League One outfit Gillingham in a friendly tomorrow night, before the real action gets underway on August 5.

McGreal will have some tough decisions to make when he picks his side for their trip to play Accrington Stanley on the opening day of the new League Two campaign, on Saturday week.

But he is remaining tight-lipped on who might feature at the Wham Stadium, with his players getting one last chance to impress before the season starts when they take on the Gills.

McGreal said: “At the minute, no-one knows who’s playing apart from me.

“We’ve worked hard on our shape off the ball in all of the friendlies we’ve played.

“(The Ipswich game) we had to work a lot harder but when you’re doing that off the ball a lot more, that’s when you need that composure.

“In the five friendlies before that, we had dominated and it’s a great game for me and Steve (Ball) to analyse and look back on, in the coming days.”

Colchester were beaten for the first time in pre-season when they lost 1-0 at home to Championship side Ipswich Town, on Tuesday night.

Joe Garner’s headed goal just before the hour mark proved enough to give Town victory, in front of a crowd of 3,752 at the Weston Homes Community Stadium.

“It was a great game for us and a great exercise for us,” said McGreal.

“We’ve done particularly well in the games that we’ve had but against a lot fitter Ipswich side, you could see we were a little bit short in the passing department.

“The big disappointment for me was our possession at times.

“I thought our shape was OK – there are still bits to work on but it just proves that against higher opposition who move the ball quicker, we have to think quicker.

“That’s why we put these fixtures in late on in the pre-season and we’ll pick the bones out of it and move on to Gillingham on Friday.

“We created little bits in the second half like when we got into the wing-back area with Kins (Lewis Kinsella).

“But Ipswich’s extra yard of speed in closing us down put us under that little bit of pressure where we needed to keep our composure.”