Colchester United’s stand-in skipper Frankie Kent admits they will have to improve if they are to get back on track at Newport County tomorrow night.

The U's are still smarting following a 1-0 home defeat at the hands of Carlisle United, at the Weston Homes Community Stadium.

John McGreal's side are now preparing to play in-form Newport and are on their travels again this Saturday, when they take on Coventry City at the Ricoh Arena - and Kent knows they must up their game.

He said: “We know that we have a hard week ahead of us.

“We want to go to Newport and put in a good solid performance and a better performance than it was (against Carlisle).”

Kent admitted they produced a “one-dimensional” performance against Carlisle.

Substitute Jamie Devitt grabbed the Cumbrians’ winner just before the hour, in a game where the U’s had the bulk of the goalscoring opportunities.

Jack Bonham was by far the busier of the two goalkeepers and the Carlisle shot-stopper played a big part in preventing Colchester from scoring in a home league game for the first time in nearly six months.

Nevertheless, defender Kent conceded the U’s were not savvy enough to get past their visitors.

Kent said: “It was a really frustrating afternoon for us not to get anything out of the game with the chances that I feel that we had.

“We feel like we dominated them in the second half, while they probably feel they had the better of the first half.

“It’s a really tough one to take but I don’t think the boys were really at it 100 per cent and that’s obviously down to us – we know we can’t let that happen.

“We weren’t really cute enough to get through them and I feel like we were pretty one-dimensional.

“We didn’t really get the ball wide enough to our creative players and we feel like everything was straight down the middle.

“We didn’t play to our strengths and it came back to haunt us.

“I didn’t have hardly anything to deal with as a centre-half but it’s about knowing how to see the game out, keep a clean sheet and take the point.

“It was one long ball, someone has switched off and they’ve taken their opportunity when they’ve got it.

“Literally two minutes before that, their goalkeeper made two brilliant saves to keep it at 0-0 so they’re the things we have to get better at.

“I keep saying it but it’s got to happen and it’s only going to come from ourselves.”

Colchester had to once again make changes to their defensive unit, with in-form loanee Ryan Inniss ruled out of the Carlisle game – but Kent insists that was no justification for their flat performance.

“It’s not that easy to adapt when players like Ryan come out of the team but we have to learn how to deal with it,” said Kent.

“It’s not an excuse and players have to come in and do the job that’s been asked of them.

“I feel like that’s happened but it’s just one thing where we’ve been caught."