COLCHESTER United head coach John McGreal says the club will not change their positive style of play despite narrowly missing out on the League Two play-offs.

The U’s have won plenty of plaudits for their entertainment value this season and only the three sides who clinched automatic promotion won more games, in the fourth tier.

Colchester netted 65 goals to make them the eighth-highest scorers in the division and boss McGreal insists they will not sacrifice their playing principles in the pursuit of success.

McGreal said: “The ambition is to get this club out of this division and the way we play football isn’t going to change.

“Up and down division two, wherever you go, opposition chairmen and players are really complimentary about how we try and play football and how certain individual players play the game.

“We don’t want to lose that and we’ve worked ever so hard to get to it.

“It’s a huge part of how (assistant manager) Steve (Ball) and I want to do things and the chairman (Robbie Cowling) has allowed us to implement that style.

“Sometimes we leave ourselves two at the back because we want to get ourselves going forward and scoring goals.

“Generally, I think the fans have been entertained home and away.

“It’s tough to get 20 wins in this division and we want to continue that.”

Colchester held their end-of-season individual meetings with their players last week and McGreal admits there was a feeling of disappointment in the air, after they missed out on the play-offs.

The U’s finished the campaign with back-to-back wins over promoted sides Lincoln City and MK Dons but missed out on a top-seven finish by a point.

“You can look everywhere and you wouldn’t sleep, because it would be ifs, buts and maybes,” said McGreal.

“We’ve had a good last seven games where we’ve taken 13 points.

“We had a terrific start, which we were all saying throughout pre-season.

“I thought pre-season was excellent and got us a really good start.

“Expectations were high given the start that we had and the players we brought in and the way we were playing; the amount of support and letters we’ve had saying that it’s probably the best football that we’ve had in ten years.

“You can look back to January and where we weren’t able to close games out when we were winning them, at that time.

“There’s disappointment on reflection after the Lincoln game when it hit home like it did for everyone, with our meetings on Tuesday.

“It was a little bit sombre when you’re looking round at the injured players who weren’t around at that crucial time of the year.

“We certainly could have done with them, just to get those extra couple of points or wins that we needed.

“I don’t think the club has hit 20 wins for about ten years or something like that, which we’ve been able to do.

“There’s also been 19 clean sheets and some brilliant goals and some exceptional individual performances.

“But it hasn’t got us to where we wanted to go, which is the disappointing thing.”