JOHN McGreal has urged his Colchester United players to rediscover the high standards that have helped them rise into League Two’s automatic promotion places.

The U’s boss admits their levels were not good enough in the 4-0 thrashing at Carlisle United, which was their heaviest defeat of the season so far.

Colchester are now preparing for a trip to play second-placed MK Dons this weekend and McGreal has stressed the need for them to immediately get back on track.

McGreal said: “You’d like to think that it’s a good thing that we have a big game against MK Dons coming up (straight after the Carlisle defeat).

“Every day in this division will have a bad day at the office and this was ours.

“We’re not going to mask it up.

“We don’t want one game to ruin what we’ve been doing.

“There’s peaks and troughs in football.

“We’ve obviously hit a big trough (against Carlisle) and it’s a heavy defeat.

“But it’s one where we need to analyse it and look at the buzz words that we’ve used like standards and habits, because they weren’t there to be seen.

“We’ve made a terrific start but it just shows you that the levels weren’t good enough (against Carlisle).

“If you’re not at a certain level in this division, you will get beaten.

“But it’s three points lost and that’s all.

“It’s one where we’ll regroup but we’ll definitely need a more than 20-per-cent performance from the players, at MK Dons.

“It’s one where you’ll be hoping we’ll be getting right back on it.

“Hopefully one or two might be fit and we’ll see through the week and look to put in a much better performance than we did at Carlisle.”

Colchester are assessing the fitness of centre-back Frankie Kent after he limped out of the Carlisle defeat.

The defender suffered an ankle injury just after the half hour mark in the loss at Brunton Park but battled on until eventually being taken off, midway through the second half.

“We were thinking he could get through it but the more the game went on, there was an opportunity to take him off really,” added McGreal.

“Rather than bring on an extra forward, the way that he was hobbling about we felt it was wise to take him off.

“Frank being Frank, he wanted to stay on and play for the cause but I think it was wiser to take him off.”