DMITRI Halajko believes Colchester United’s January transfer window was one of the most successful in League Two.

The U’s brought in five new players last month, making one permanent signing and four loan additions.

Conor Wilkinson arrived on an 18-month deal from Motherwell for an undisclosed fee while Jayden Richardson and Riley Harbottle also joined Colchester from Scottish Premiership clubs, signing on loan from Aberdeen and Hibernian respectively.

The U’s also snapped up Alistair Smith and Harry Anderson from League One clubs after joining from Lincoln City and Stevenage respectively, with the duo both scoring on their home debuts in Colchester’s 3-3 draw with Forest Green Rovers, last weekend.

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Colchester also held onto their talented young first-team players amid interest from other clubs in the window and sporting director Halajko was happy with the business they completed, in January.

Halajko said: “We’re pleased with the window.

“We’ve certainly improved the squad and we’ve certainly improved our starting XI.

“That’s never easy to do in January; it’s a hard feat but I think we’ve had one of the better windows in the league.

“If you look at the other clubs in the league, there’s not many that have had a better window than us, in terms of the quality that we’ve brought in.

Gazette:

“Everybody that we’ve brought in is a proven League Two performer or a proven League One performer and that’s not easy to do.

“It’s been very positive and hopefully, it sets us up for a good second half of the season.”

Colchester were able to back Danny and Nicky Cowley, in last month’s window.

The duo were appointed as the U’s new management team on January 4 and Halajko says potential signings were already on the club’s radar.

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“We certainly had our shortlist and our long list of players in place before that,” added Halajko.

“The work probably starts two months before January, in terms of scoping about what might be needed and then whenever you have a manager change, you need their opinions on that final decision for those guys to look over and to see what type of players they felt would fit their game type and really add to what we’re trying to do here.

Gazette:

“I think we’ve managed to do that with some good early ground-work so that when the new managers did come in, we didn’t have to start all over again and we already had a good bulk of work behind us so we could then move pretty quickly and secure players, with them probably only having been in the building for ten days or so.”