Westley: Odds against us

Graham Westley admitted Stevenage were facing 'mission impossible' in their bid to avoid relegation after losing 3-2 to Colchester.

Boro took the lead through Michael Doughty after just 11 minutes but Freddie Sears struck twice either side of a Jabo Ibehre strike to put the U's 3-1 up. Stevenage hit back at the death through Luke Freeman but it was too little, too late and their misery was compounded when Filipe Morais was sent off for violent conduct. Boro are now four points adrift of safety with four games to go and while vowing to fight on, Westley accepts the chances of survival are remote. "In terms of our survival chances, it's probably mission impossible now," said the Stevenage manager. "Everyone will write us off. We've got four games to go and probably need to win them all now, which is obviously a big ask for us. "But we will fight on to the bitter end and we certainly won't give up." On the game itself, Westley said: "We made a great start and were one-up going into half-time but had not really played with the belief that we could go on and score more goals to build on our advantage. "I was trying to get a message across to the players to be more positive but it was too late and Colchester scored just before the break, which then gave them an extra bit of belief for the second half. "After the break we came out with a game plan but, before you knew it, we'd conceded again and were 2-1 down."