Colchester United left-back Matt Briggs is set to undergo a hip operation today which is expected to rule him out of action for several months.

The defender has not featured for the U's this season and is set to go under the knife, in a bid to get him back to action as quickly as possible.

Colchester first-team physio Tony Flynn told the U's programme: "Unfortunately, the best surgeon has been unavailable until this week so there has been a slight delay in getting the surgery done.

"Matt will go under the knife on Thursday but a couple of weeks won't matter too much with the time we are expecting him to be out of action.

"And we might well make that time up anyway, because we had the best man for the job performing the surgery.

"There will be a lot of hard work for Matt once the operation is done and the initial recuperating period is over but for now, we're just looking at getting the operation out of the way."