FRANKIE Kent admits it is imperative that Colchester United quickly rediscover their consistency in their chase for a League Two play-off spot.

The U’s crashed to a 3-0 defeat against fellow promotion hopefuls Forest Green Rovers last night, to drop to seventh in the table.

Colchester’s results have been erratic of late, with John McGreal’s side having recorded only one win in their last five matches.

But they are still in strong contention for a play-off place with nine games remaining and ahead of their trip to play ninth-placed Exeter City this weekend, defender Kent admits they must get a run of form going.

Kent said: “It’s been up and down and we need to just find that consistency.

“We don’t want to run out of games.

“It’s been hard with the last three scorelines - it’s hard to get my head round and all of the boys are disappointed.

“We know that we have to react and come back strongly.

“To be fair, I think we’ve done that this year.

“We need to respond in exactly the same way as we did after the Swindon defeat recently.

“It’s going to be a tough game and Exeter are in and around us but we’ll look to respond.

“We’re happy that there’s another game on Saturday and we don’t have to wait a week – hopefully we can bounce back straight away.”

Colchester were brought back to earth with a bump against Forest Green, following their 3-0 triumph over Newport County last weekend.

Goals from Liam Shephard, Reece Brown and Christian Doidge left the U’s beaten by Forest Green, at the JobServe Community Stadium.

It resulted in Rovers leapfrogging Colchester into sixth place in the table and centre-back Kent says an opportunity went begging for them to boost their play-off hopes.

“It was a missed chance (against Forest Green) and that’s the main thing – we need to try and take these chances.

“I feel like we could have prevented all three of their goals.

“It was a bit loose from us both on and off the ball and in transition.

“We’ve lost 3-0 at home and it’s not good, is it?

“The boys are disappointed but we gave it all and didn’t stop trying and running until the last minute.

“It was one of those nights that didn’t go right but we’ll put it behind us.

“We’ll take the positives as much as we can and go into Saturday.”