WAYNE Brown says belief will be key for Colchester United when they host Leyton Orient in a crunch clash tonight.

The U’s have not won in five and are desperate for a victory to pull themselves away from the League Two relegation zone.

They face an O’s side who are also without a permanent manager and have lost their last five games and are winless in 11 matches.

Colchester lie two points above the bottom two, following last weekend’s 1-1 draw with Oldham Athletic.

The U’s battled back to claim a point in the second half and after seeing his side finish strongly, interim boss Brown wants them to carry on where they left off against the Latics when they face the O’s.

Brown said: “Spirit gets you a long way in any sport and we need that spirit and fight but more than anything else, we need the belief.

“You want momentum in every game but it helps when you finish a game like we did and take the game to an opposition like we did, in the second half.

“To now take that into Tuesday is a lot easier.

“It’s not how we found ourselves (against Hartlepool) where we were winning but ended up losing a game of football.

“There were a lot of good performances in there and we could go throughout the team.

“Those performances need to keep coming to the fore in every game that we have.

“We have another home game here on Tuesday night against Orient and we need the same effort, commitment and desire from the XI that we put out there.”

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Colchester were 1-0 winners at Leyton Orient less than a month ago, with Freddie Sears netting their winner.

The U’s have failed to win since then but interim boss Brown was encouraged by the second-half display against Oldham.

“We’ve worked extremely hard to get the lads back up to a level mentally where they need to be, to give ourselves the best chance of winning a game of football,” added Brown, who is preparing to take charge of his tenth match in his current interim spell.

“I thought in patches in the first half there was a bit of a lack of belief and penetration but that certainly wasn’t there, in the second half.

“We’ve asked the question and we’ve got into them a bit at half-time for a response and they’ve given us that.

“We need to keep that positivity in the group now and they’ve got a really good second-half performance, to take into Tuesday’s game.”