Colchester United interim head coach Wayne Brown on Scunthorpe

The U's head to Glanford Park on Saturday lying five points above the League Two relegation zone and face an Iron side who are currently nine points adrift of safety.

Colchester, who are unbeaten in three matches, know that a win will give their survival hopes a major boost while at the same time piling the pressure on their hosts, in their quest to stay up.

Brown admits it is good to take points off the clubs in and around them in the table - but the U's interim head coach has stressed that their pre-match preparations will be just the same.

He said: “Yes it is important to take points off teams who are around us.

“It’s certainly imperative that we don’t drop points against teams who are around us and we’ve done that.

“But it doesn’t matter who you play, whether it’s Port Vale, Forest Green, Salford, Orient, Carlisle, Oldham – it’s three points up for grabs.

“We’ll do our due diligence on the opposition, try and see what their strengths and weaknesses are, try and nullify their strengths and obviously look at ways we can hurt them.

“That’s been the process for any game that we play, no matter what the opposition.

“I think people do get a little bit done up in writing us off against the bigger, better teams in the league and expect the world against teams that are in and around us.

“But that’s the nature of the beast and it’s only natural for people to think like that.

“But for us within eternally, it’s an opportunity for three points and we’ll be doing all we can to prepare the lads in the best way we can to achieve that.

“Scunthorpe will be a very different outfit to Port Vale and there’ll be areas we can exploit and areas where we need to tighten up.

“We’ve done a lot of work this week looking at the performance and looking at the structure and shape against Port Vale and how we nullified what they threw at us which was very pleasing but we want to try and improve on that now.

“It’s a totally different game on Saturday against different opposition, maybe a different shape; there’s always adjustments and tweaks to be made but although you want to nullify what they can do, you also want to concentrate on what we can do to hurt them."

Colchester head into their game at Scunthorpe on the back of a vital 1-0 win over Port Vale, last weekend.

It was the U's first home victory since last November and means they head to Scunthorpe looking to extend their unbeaten run to four matches.

“You always want to try and back up good performances and good results with another one," said Brown.

“Hopefully getting that home win is a psychological boost to the lads more than anything else, because we’d played well in the home fixtures before that and dominated without getting the three points which is the most important thing.

“Now we’ve managed to get over the line against Port Vale, hopefully we can build on that, not just on Saturday but for the rest of the games that we have at home.

“It’s natural to have that confidence boost with any win, not just because it was the first home win for some time.

“If you look at the spirit and the team morale and the togetherness that there is, the confidence in training and a little bit of a buzz, it was the same after the win at Salford or Leyton Orient.

“Just because it was after an elusive home win as people were making it out to be, it’s no different.

“It just gives the lads a little bit of a confidence boost, going into Saturday’s game.

“There’s a little bit of momentum gathering and although the results are the be all and end all, the performances have been positive.

“We’ve not been playing badly by any stretch of the imagination in previous games and it’s just about being positive around the group and not making too much of spells where we’re not so good in games – it’s more about concentrating on the positive things in games and trying to keep that positivity around the lads."