COLCHESTER United will today hold individual meetings with their entire first-team squad – with a busy summer of arrivals and departures on the cards.

The U’s have begun the process of preparing for a fourth season in League Two, after narrowly missing out on the play-offs last weekend.

Colchester’s players will report to their Florence Park training ground in Tiptree, with some of them set to exit the club in the coming months.

Sammie Szmodics, who is out of contract at the U’s this summer, has been linked with a move to the Championship.

And fellow U’s academy product Frankie Kent, who was crowned Colchester’s Player of the Year last week, is also said to be attracting interest from bigger clubs.

Colchester face a battle to hold onto the talented duo and U’s head coach John McGreal will work closely with chairman Robbie Cowling and director of football Tony Humes on the future of a host of other players.

A number of the first-team squad are out of contract this summer, although the U's will have options to extend some of the deals.

Along with top scorer Szmodics, the likes of Brennan Dickenson, Mikael Mandron and Tom Eastman will also see their existing contracts expire.

And the U’s must decide whether or not to offer a contract to midfielder Sam Saunders, who has impressed since joining them on a short-term deal in March.

U’s boss McGreal said: “It’ll be an interesting summer.

“We’ve already had one or two little thoughts - we’ll probably get together (today) and then we’ll see what the summer brings.

“The players will be in for a bit of a debrief and testing and everything like that.

"We have a summer now to move on and contracts to sort out and targets to try and bring in.

"That's how we try and move forward with the club and want to keep evolving as a club.

“We’re trying to get stronger and stronger with the team.

“We’ve been able to do that over the three years.

“We’ve missed out again and we’ve broken that 70-point mark, which we haven’t done for a while.

“You have to deal with it and move on as quickly as you can and then look again to try and improve to go forward next season.”

Loanee Abo Eisa has now returned to his parent club Shrewsbury Town, following the completion of his loan spell at Colchester.

Eisa made 14 appearances and scored two goals for the U’s after linking up with them in the January transfer window.

He tweeted: 'Just want to say Thank you to everyone associated with @ColU_Official for my time here it’s been a good one. Gutted about yesterday but I’m sure you’ll have better moments to come in the near future.'