WAYNE Brown wants his Colchester United side to rediscover their ‘killer instinct’ ahead of their clash with Tranmere Rovers tomorrow.

The U’s head into the match at the JobServe Community Stadium aiming to get back to winning ways, following back-to-back defeats.

Colchester, who lie eight points above the League Two relegation zone, have not scored in those losses against Forest Green Rovers and Bristol Rovers.

But U’s interim head coach Brown insists his side are creating plenty of goalscoring opportunities - and is confident that the goals will come.

Brown said: “The lads have got to take a lot of heart from how we went about our business in those games, what we did and how many chances we created.

Gazette:

“We’ve just got to find that killer instinct and a bit of ruthlessness in the final third.

“I’m sure if we do that, then we’ll still create chances and we’ll be winning games of football again.

“It’s about repetition; you do it in training and you’ve got to recreate scenarios that they found themselves in not just against Forest Green but also against Bristol Rovers, who are both good teams.

“We’ve got to keep recreating those opportunities and those scenarios and try to get them finishing in training; loads of finishing exercises, loads of crossing exercises to flood their minds of balls coming into the box and having that killer instinct.

“That’s the only way that you can improve – it’s like anything else.

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“It’s like a golfer; if he doesn’t practice then he doesn’t get any better and football is no different.

“The lads know where we’re falling short a little bit at the moment and we’re doing everything we can to put that right.

“But first and foremost, we need to keep the level of performance as a collective where they are, because if we do that we’ll give ourselves the best chance of picking results up.”

Colchester registered 14 shots to Forest Green's ten in their defeat on Monday night, with three of them on target.

It was a similar story at Bristol Rovers, where they mustered nine shots overall to their hosts' ten and had three efforts on target, in the 1-0 defeat.

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“It is tough when you haven’t scored in the last two fixtures but you have created a reasonable amount of opportunities to do so," said Brown.

“It’s just about being positive around the group, keep the confidence into them and keep working on those areas for us to get better.

“We know it’s there and every team goes on a bit of a barren spell and if this is ours – not scoring in two games – then I’m sure there’s a lot worse teams in the league that have gone on longer periods without scoring goals.

“Listen, we’re not going to be obsessed about not scoring or not taking chances because I fully believe that if we create the chances like we have done in our games, the law of averages is that you’re going to start putting them away.

“If we continue to work as hard as we have done on the training pitch to try and eradicate the missed chances and staying positive, it will come."