JOHN McGreal has urged Colchester United's supporters to play their part ahead of their back-to-back home games.

The U's host Macclesfield Town at the JobServe Community Stadium this afternoon and follow that up with a clash with Bradford City, next Tuesday night.

Colchester head into their game against the Silkmen unbeaten in their last 12 matches and sit three points off League Two's automatic promotion places.

McGreal said: “We’re looking for our home fans to get it going and get the drum banging straight away.

“This is the start of that run of games against Macclesfield and we can’t take our eye off the ball against them because if you do, they’ll take points off you.

“It’s the first of a couple of home games for us and we want to start on the front foot and get the fans right behind us.

“They’re huge for us; the relationship that we’ve got with the fans at the minute is fantastic and we want to keep building on that.

“There’s new fans coming to the stadium of late and we want to continue to improve on that.

“We’re on a good run of form at the moment; there’s been a couple of draws in there of late but it keeps us ticking over.

“We’re a couple of points off the top seven and three points off the top three, so we want to build on that."

Theo Robinson is vying for a place in Colchester's starting line-up today, after the striker returned to the club on loan from Southend United until the end of the season.

“I’m delighted to have him on board," said McGreal.

“It had been on-going for a week, prior to getting him in.

“He went back to Southend, it was left to the two chairman and Robbie (Cowling) was able to get the deal done over the weekend.

“We know about Theo and I just hope that we give him the service for him to score the goals.

“He’s been able to do that when he’s been involved.

“Just prior to him going back to Southend, he had a number of games in his legs in a short space of time.

“We didn’t know for sure if he was coming back so we thought it was best to not get him involved at Stevenage, because he isn’t our player.

“But he’s been training this week and he’ll be one to choose from, come Saturday.

“We need that competition.

“It’s given us that whilst he’s been here; we’ve lost Jevani (Brown) and Brendan (Wiredu) has gone back so we felt we needed one at that top end of the pitch."