Colchester United fan Si Collinson's views on the U's

If someone had offered me the chance of four points out of the possible six, I would have taken it and run off before any change of heart could happen.

But in a way, those four points were also a little frustrating. Exeter came to town on the back of the longest current unbeaten run, only for Colchester to bang three past them and end up 3-1 winners - a very pleasant shock, which probably even the most optimistic of fans could not see happening.

Then Newport arrived and pressed us well, taking the lead only for Freddie Sears to bang in his seventh league goal of the season and secure a point.

Now why was it frustrating, I hear you ask? We got a win and a draw, scoring four goals in the process. Well I think it is for two reasons.

The first is how can we go from labouring to defeat against Stevenage to an almost demolition job of a team who up to that point and only lost one in the league, all season?

Then, after that how come we did not play Newport off the pitch and make it two from two in the win column?

I think this was more down to how our opponents went about their game.

Exeter turned up almost as if they had the points and were on their way back home before kick-off, sitting back allowing us to play football and that was their undoing.

Newport played like the away side should, pressing high and not allowing us to rest on the ball, while they attacked on the break.

The second is down to my common theme about how we set up and alter things that are not quite going to plan.

It's seemingly not just me to pick up on these issues, with some interesting Twitter debates about just what is going wrong.

Take the Newport game for example - after the defeat of Exeter, we should have been putting them to the sword.

But instead when we were able to play forward we insisted on playing the ball out wide and knocking crosses into the box, not necessarily a bad move if the target men are not the shortest on the pitch.

So this isn’t quite working; let's look to the bench and see how could the game be tinkered with to maximise what we are producing.

For me, it should have been step forward Frank Nouble – a player who I think should feel hard done by after losing his place in the starting XI.

Get him on and allow his physical nature to shine though and give their defence something new to think about.

This looked like it was going to happen, right up until the ball left Freddie’s foot for the equaliser. Then it was all change and Tom Eastman came on instead.

Now I’ve got a lot of time for Tom and feel he is a class act both on and off the field, but why when finally getting the goal to level the game and having a very dominant spell does Hayden Mullins decide to make the forward sit down and bring on a centre-back instead?

Then there's players who have started games and not been taken off when it was clear to one and all that there is a better player on the bench, not being used.

I hope it is not the case, but if this carries on there might be a change of mood in the squad as to why players are playing over others, when it's obvious that they are not the correct ones to be in the starting line-up.

It's almost a case of players who play well are more at risk of being dropped over those who have poor games.

Is it the management trying to get them to play through the poor spell to keep their confidence up, hoping that they will improve or is it a case of they can not see what we do?

Mullins finally came over to clap the fans after the Newport game which I was pleased to see but I still think it is too little, too late to win the fans over.

Roll on Tuesday and the trip to Swindon for the knockout stages of the pizza cup – maybe if we progress to the next round I’ll give it the correct name – then on to the FA Cup second at home to a strong Wigan side.

Let's all get behind the lads and hope it's more a case of versus Exeter rather than versus Stevenage. Up the U’s.