DANNY Cowley believes Colchester United’s important home clash with Grimsby Town tonight is an opportunity to produce a winning response to a painful defeat.
The U’s are level on points with the Mariners heading into the game at the JobServe Community Stadium, with both clubs sitting seven points above the League Two relegation zone.
Colchester now have back-to-back home games to prepare for and are aiming to bounce back from their 1-0 defeat at Harrogate Town, where they conceded in stoppage-time to suffer a first loss in five matches.
And U’s head coach Cowley feels this evening’s fixture is a chance for his team to produce a reaction.
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Cowley said: “There’s always an opportunity to take learning and we will take the learning from the game and then we will see what we’re made of.
“This is always what you learn from a group, in a moment of difficulty.
“When defeat comes, how do you respond?
“For us, there’s a really good opportunity on Tuesday to put a really good response together.
“Defeat never defines you, it’s always in your response and now we have two home games and we have to respond well.”
Colchester produced a dominant first-half display against Harrogate and were worthy of at least a point but were ultimately made to pay a high price for a lack of ruthlessness, at the EnviroVent Stadium.
Cowley said: “Good teams win; you’re not a good team if you don’t win and they’re the facts!
“I think we played really well for large parts of the game.
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“You don’t come away from home against a team in such a good moment and control and dominate the game like we did; 25 shots to 11 says a lot about how it unfolded.
“A lot of our play was really good up until the final action and I don’t think we were able to be as clinical and ruthless as we needed to be.”
Colchester are hoping that midfielder Arthur Read will be fit to return to the squad for the Grimsby game.
Read missed the Harrogate game due to a calf injury but the injury is not thought to be a serious one.
Cowley added: “It’s a really low level calf injury, so we hope that he’ll be available.”
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