COLCHESTER United midfielder Sean Murray is expecting a positive reaction in tonight’s League Two clash at home to Mansfield Town.

The U’s suffered a heavy defeat in their last outing at the Weston Homes Community Stadium, going down 4-0 at home to automatic promotion-chasers Portsmouth on Saturday.

However, they have an immediate chance to get their play-off quest back on track tonight.

And Murray says he and his team-mates are delighted to be playing again so soon - and determined to right some of the wrongs.

“It’s good that there’s a game so quickly after the Portsmouth disappointment,” said the 23-year old.

“There’s less time for us to dwell on that performance and result and hopefully we can correct it.

“We have to work on what went wrong but we also have to try and forget about it as quickly as possible.

“Sometimes, you get games like that one and they’re an odd one out but overall, in the few weeks that I’ve been playing here, we’ve been fairly happy.

“We’ve got a massive game against Mansfield tonight. They’re around us in the table. But every game is massive for us now between now and the end of the season.

“There’s so little space between the teams around us in the table and we need to just pick up and go again.”

While acknowledging Portsmouth’s quality, Murray felt his side let themselves down on Saturday.

He felt they lacked a cutting edge in the final third and believes an early goal tonight would be a perfect way to help them get back on track.

“I don’t think the performance was good enough against Portsmouth,” said the Irishman, who joined on a free transfer on January 31.

“We need to improve.

“Portsmouth have good quality players and they’re very organised as a team.

“They’re one of the top teams in this league and they’ve got a massive chance of getting promoted.

“But I think we need to be a bit more aggressive in the final third and finish a few of our chances.

“If we can get a few early goals which we haven’t really done recently, that would help us improve as a team.

“We’ll aim to make a good start against Mansfield, come out of the blocks quickly and go hard again.”

n Continued on page 38.

Colchester are tenth in the League Two table - three points behind seventh-placed Exeter City.

After tonight they have nine games left, with five of them being at the Community Stadium.

They are away to Crewe Alexandra on Saturday.