Colchester United skipper Tommy Smith's honest assessment

The U's find themselves three points above the League Two drop zone, after suffering a 3-1 defeat at Crawley Town on New Year's Day.

Colchester were sloppy at both ends of the pitch at the People's Pension Stadium, as they tumbled to another away defeat.

And in an honest assessment, captain Smith admits things must change and fast if they are to drag themselves away from the mire in the second half of the season.

Smith said: "We need to do better.

"We know that things have to change for us to avoid getting into that situation.

"None of us are happy or want to be in this situation.

"We know it's not good enough for the fans that have travelled to watch us and we know we need to turn it around quickly but we know we have the quality to do so.

"If you take your chances, that changes games.

"We could have gone ahead in games and that just changes the whole dynamic of the game and gives us more confidence.

"That's something we need to look at but we obviously need to look at the other end as well and stop giving easy chances away and stop conceding goals.

"We just weren't good enough from back to front.

"We're conceding goals at the wrong time at the moment and you need to go ahead in games, especially away from home.

"You need to put the onus back on the home team to come out and play and we haven't been able to do that.

"Chances come from different areas of the pitch and it's not just a defence.

"Everyone needs to look at themselves in the mirror, from front to back.

"We need to take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror and we have to improve quickly, because we're slowly getting sucked into where we don't want to be - it has to change fast.

"It shouldn't take two or three goals for us to start playing the football we know we can play.

"We need to be braver when the score was 0-0 and it wasn't good enough.

"We felt confident going into the game, thinking that it would be a good game for us to kick-start our season and New Year but it wasn't to be.

"I don't think anyone had a particularly good game and we need to regroup quickly.

"Fortunately, there's another game coming up on Tuesday for us to bounce back and hopefully we can do that with a good performance and a win.

"Immediately following a performance like that, tempers are flaring a little bit so you take stock of that, go away, come back into training and assess things further with a calm head.

"You assess it properly and see where you can improve.

"We'll watch the goals back and see what can be done to avoid those chances being given up and on the flip side, how we can create chances and hurt teams."

Colchester's trip to Crawley was their first game back since December 11, following four successive postponements due to Covid-19 cases.

Freddie Sears' tenth goal of the season was only a consolation as Ashley Nadesan's brace and Joel Lynch's strike gave the hosts victory.

The U's had their chances, with Alan Judge twice denied by Crawley keeper Glenn Morris and Brendan Wiredu and Luke Hannant also going close.

"We're creating chances but we're not taking them at the crucial times, at the moment," said experienced defender Smith.

"Crawley took their chances when they came but we feel like we gave the chances up for them, whereas we had to work fairly hard for our chances.

"The hardest thing in football is to put the ball in the back of the net and I'll never fault anyone for putting themselves in the position to try and score a goal.

"No-one wants to miss chances and on another day, they will go in.

"In the second half we had chances to get back in the game and when it was back to 3-1, we had one off the line from a corner and Hanno (Luke Hannant) sliding in - it was a tough chance but if that goes in, we could come away with a draw.

"But we know that we were far from good enough.

"Credit to Crawley for making it a difficult game - we know what they do and that is work really hard, work their socks off and play for second balls and it worked for them."