Colchester United have two games left to save their season – starting at home to Swindon Town this evening.

The equation is simple. If the U’s beat the Robins tonight, and then shock promotion-chasing Preston with a follow-up home victory on Sunday, then they will have completed a memorable relegation escape act.

The U’s looked doomed, when trailing 2-1 at Fleetwood Town on Saturday, with just five minutes on the clock, especially as rivals Crewe and Crawley were both winning away from home.

If these results had stayed the same, then Tony Humes’ men would have been officially relegated to League Two, with two games still to play.

But in a dramatic turn of events, the U’s plundered two goals to win 3-2 at Highbury Stadium, while Crawley were shipping two goals at Peterborough to slump to a 4-3 defeat.

Suddenly, the future did not look quite so bleak for the long-suffering U’s. They will exit the bottom four, if they can beat Swindon this evening, which would guarantee that their fate is in their own hands this weekend.

“We’ve known all along that’s it’s about us and what we do,” explained Humes.

“It’s in our own hands. We go into Tuesday night with the belief that we can get something out of the game. We certainly won’t be looking beyond Tuesday.

“We’ve got a belief that we can get out of it, and obviously if we win our last two games then we WILL get out of it.

“We didn’t know what was going on elsewhere (on Saturday), because we were concentrating on our game.

“But afterwards you are aware of it, and that shows the real pressure situations that these players are under.

“Our players have been through it, and will be better for it in the long run, and hopefully also in the short-term.

“Personally, I have never been through this sort of thing before, even as a player. It’s difficult and it’s tough, but we’ve got to keep going,” added Humes.”

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