John McGreal says having a full week between fixtures was the main reason for him making only one substitution in Colchester United’s League Two opener at Notts County.

The U’s head coach opted to make only one change in the 0-0 draw, sending on striker Mikael Mandron for Aaron Collins with 15 minutes remaining at Meadow Lane.

McGreal elected to leave the likes of Courtney Senior and Luke Norris on the bench and says he had Colchester’s seven-day gap between games in mind, when he contemplated possible changes during the match.

Colchester play their first home game of the season this weekend when they host Port Vale at the JobServe Community Stadium, on Saturday.

McGreal said: “I would have used a couple more substitutes, had it not been for the fact that we didn’t have a midweek game.

“That was in my thinking, because we’re going from Saturday to Saturday and we have a little bit more time to recover.

“They’ll recover well and then we go again because looking at Port Vale’s result (last Saturday), it’s going to be another tough game.

“Neil (Aspin) and Brabs (Gary Brabin) will be getting them going and they had a good win against Cambridge, so we know it’s going to be tough.

“But we’ve set out a marker for ourselves and hopefully, we can improve on that.”

McGreal has reiterated his desire to see his Colchester side add a more physical side to their game, this season.

The U’s more than stood up to a strong Notts County side in their league curtain-raiser, something that pleased the head coach.

“We still want to play but we also want to bring that element of physicality,” added the Colchester boss.

“We still have gaps to bridge against teams like Notts County and Mansfield, who are huge clubs in this division.

“We keep in-house what we do with our challenges and we don’t want to put extra pressure on the boys, because they put enough pressure on themselves.

“But we want to try and do things, this season.”