John McGreal pleased to see Colchester get past Leyton Orient

Posted Sunday, September 22, 2019 by PA

Colchester head coach John McGreal felt his side fully merited their 2-1 win over Leyton Orient.

The U’s took a third-minute lead through teenager Kwame Poku, who fired home a low left-footed shot from just inside the area from Theo Robinson’s cross.

And Ryan Jackson doubled their lead in the 28th minute with a long-range shot from the edge of the area, from Brandon Comley’s pass.

But Orient got back into it in the 44th minute when goalkeeper Dean Gerken’s mistake allowed Louis Dennis to find Conor Wilkinson, for an easy tap-in.

It made for a closer second half but Colchester held out for back-to-back victories.

McGreal said: “It was a very pleasing win. The pleasing thing is that we’ve got back-to-back wins.

“We were the better team with some of the football we played, the goals we scored and the threat we were at times.

“When it’s only that one goal in it you don’t want to be that little bit squeaky. The pleasing thing was that for all of our good football in the first half, I loved the way we started the second half.

“We didn’t feel sorry for ourselves – we kept back on it again and that was the pleasing thing.

“When you don’t get the third goal, you then look to try and protect and that’s what I thought happened in the last 15 or 20 minutes.

“We had a little bit of luck at times but I also felt they had some when we went through to try and make it 3-1.”

Orient have gone six League Two games without a win and manager Ross Embleton admits they left themselves with it all to do.

Embleton said: “I’m disappointed at the fact that we keep giving ourselves too much to do. We’re coming off the pitch again thinking ‘we got so close and near’ and that’s not good enough.

“We’re not giving ourselves a chance – that is probably the best way for me to describe it.

“There was a contrast between the first half and second-half performance. I thought in the first half, we were too acceptant to drop back and get back behind the ball.

“We didn’t get enough pressure on Colchester and try and force them into any sort of errors. We knew where we felt we could really get after them but we didn’t do that enough to give ourselves a platform and a chance to get ourselves to contribute anything to the game.

“We had a couple of little spells here and there and little moments that we looked good but that’s not enough.

“We didn’t give ourselves enough opportunity to play our way into the game.”