John McGreal hails Colchester team spirit after win against Yeovil

Posted Wednesday, October 03, 2018 by PA

John McGreal says spirits are high within his Colchester squad after their 3-1 win over Yeovil boosted their promotion chase.

The U’s are up to fourth in League Two, with Frank Nouble’s brace and Tom Eastman’s opener securing victory over the Glovers, who scored a late consolation through Tom James.

Colchester boss McGreal said: “The team spirit is fantastic – the whole team as a collective deserved the win.

“I’m delighted – we had the boys in over the weekend and Monday and training has been really good.

“We had a lot of feedback on what happened against Bury and it was great that we had a game tonight because we wanted to get back involved.

“The boys have been champing at the bit and I think you saw that in the performance.

“Yeovil have pulled teams all over the place this season – they’ve been to Notts County and won by four and Newport and won by six, so tonight we felt as though we had to tighten up in that midfield area and I thought we did that.

“We nailed that down and we set the tempo with a couple of shots early on which gave us the confidence and led to a really dominant second-half performance.”

Yeovil keeper Nathan Baxter denied Sammie Szmodics and Ryan Jackson before Colchester took a 25th-minute lead through Tom Eastman, who scored from close range after Harry Pell headed on Courtney Senior’s corner.

Nouble doubled the hosts’ lead just before the hour mark when he dispossessed Jordan Green near the halfway line before lifting a fine 25-yard shot over Baxter and in.

Nouble added a third with six minutes remaining when he fired past Baxter from Szmodics’ assist and although James scored an excellent 25-yard free-kick in stoppage-time for Yeovil, Colchester deserved their win.

Yeovil manager Darren Way said: “It was a disappointing result.

“We felt there was a little bit of a lack of discipline with the marking for the first goal.

“We talked about them having 50 per cent set-plays and I feel goals change games.

“It’s one thing that I’ve noticed that the group of players we’ve got at the moment when we go a goal down are not strong enough to be able to come back and it’s disappointing and frustrating.

“But I feel that we’re missing one or two players and we need them back.

“I’m looking at it and understanding that this is a difficult period, with eight players out.

“One or two have mentioned that if we don’t get promoted this year it’ll be a failure which is absolutely ridiculous because we’re in a situation where if you talk about budgets and players, we have a very young team out there tonight.”