Colchester United have won two of their last three matches

The U’s have conceded just one goal in their last three matches in League Two, having kept clean sheets against both Tranmere Rovers and Gillingham.

Colchester shipped nine goals in their opening four league and cup games, this season.

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But they have looked tighter at the back, in recent games and head coach Garner is pleased with his side’s defensive performances, particularly with the likes of Nico Lawrence, Fiacre Kelleher and Tom Dallison all sidelined.

Garner said: “Two out of the last three games have been good.

“It was a fantastic result at Gillingham and a really good result and performance against Tranmere.

“The pleasing thing from my point of view as well is that we’ve only let one goal in, in three games now.

“We’ve become a lot more solid defensively and we’re giving up far fewer chances and that gives us a better chance of winning games.

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“We have another home game against Mansfield coming up which should be a really good game and I’m looking forward to that and we can try and kick on.

“The amount of players we have missing, for them to put on that performance shows the strength of the group.”

Garner admits Colchester are currently going through a transitional period, with a large number of players arriving and departing the club.

However, he was encouraged by his side’s dominant performance against Tranmere, where goals from Joe Taylor and Bradley Ihionvien gave them a well-deserved victory.

“It’s there and we know that it’s there,” said Garner.

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“The frustration probably for us as a coaching staff is that we haven’t seen it enough, on matchdays.

“We’ve seen it in pre-season and we’ve seen it regularly, in training and we’ve seen it in spells, in games.

“We’d certainly have liked to have been more consistent with team selection and formation but we’re losing players.

“We spoke at the start of this week as a staff and from the team that we picked for the opening game against Swindon which didn’t go ahead, five of them are now missing, either injured or sold.

“We’ve had to change, we’ve had to adapt and we are going through a transition period.

“We’ve brought new players in and I think they’ll be really good signings for the football club.

“I think they’re really strong players and characters but we’ve now got to gel them as quickly as possible and get players up to speed.

“We’re having to adapt more than I would like on a weekly basis because of injuries that we’re picking up and we’ve obviously sold a couple of players, as well.

“We will get better, we will improve but we need to win games short term and allow ourselves the time to make those more important changes, as we go.”