Us aim to finish on a high

Platt: No let-up

Colchester United striker Clive Platt has told skysports.com that the club intend to finish the season on a high after their play-off ambitions were all but ended at the weekend.

The U's went down 3-0 away at Scunthorpe, a result which left them 13th in the table, 13 points behind the sixth placed Iron with just seven games to play.

While it seems they now have nothing to play for, Platt says the team intends to try and win all their remaining fixtures, starting with their game at promotion-chasing Millwall on Tuesday.

He said: "We are in midtable at the moment and it may seem that we may come to a stand-still, as we can't go down and look too far away from the top six.

"But with Paul Lambert as manager, that will never happen; there's no way he would stand for it.

Trying utmost

"We will still be trying our utmost to win every game. There are 21 points on offer and you never know where that will leave us.

"Even if we can't reach that goal, the aim will be to build for next season, so we won't be relaxing just yet."

A recent five-match unbeaten run appeared to offer the Essex club a chance of a late push towards the promotion places.

But that ambition seems to have been scuppered as the U's have taken just one point from their last three games - they lost 1-0 at home to Crewe before a creditable 1-1 draw at Leicester and then Saturday's defeat to the Iron.

Slump

Platt added: "It's hard to put our finger on what has caused our slump in form. We had gained some good results prior to the defeat at home to Crewe Alexandra, but we've had some tough away games since; gaining a point at the Walkers Stadium, in a game that we were actually disappointed not to have won.

"We were looking to take the positives into the following game against Scunthorpe United and started brightly for the first half an hour.

"But we never recovered from conceding the first goal and we were well and truly beaten in the end.

"We will, however, look to bounce back against Millwall and we know we are capable of getting a result."