COLCHESTER United skipper Kemi Izzet hopes the club can use Tuesday night’s disappointing 1-0 loss in the Essex derby at Dagenham & Redbridge as motivation to kick-start an end-of-season run.

U’s boss John Ward described the limp loss as his side’s worst performance of the season, a second successive defeat seeing Colchester drift 10 points away from the play-off places.

Izzet concurred that the scrappy match at Victoria Road was one of the biggest low points of the season, but has assured frustrated supporters that the team are ready to go again when MK Dons visit this afternoon.

“The performance wasn’t good enough on Tuesday night and we’re well aware of that,” said Izzet. “Hopefully it could be a defining moment of our season. There’s still 11 games left and hopefully that’s the kick up the backside we need.”

He continued: “It’s not all been doom and gloom though. I’d say there’s probably been two poor performances – Tuesday night and Hartlepool away (1-0 loss). They’re the only two I can think of off the top of my head and two games out of X amount isn’t that bad.

“We’ve created chances throughout the season, the problem is we’ve just not taken them. You look back on a few games where we could have been out of sight at half-time and got punished.

“We need to be a bit more clinical in both boxes. We’re creating chances at the moment and not scoring and yet when someone creates a chance against us it seems to go in the back of the net.

“I would never point fingers at an individual or the strikers in particular, it’s a matter of all players stepping up to the plate. I know I’ve missed some chances of late, some defenders have missed chances, so we’re all to blame for chances being missed.

“The bottom line is we can’t keep missing.”

The U’s have suffered their fair share of bad luck in the second half of the season, having a perfectly good goal disallowed at Charlton, while both Southampton and Dagenham enjoyed a fortunate run of the ball to break the deadlock in the last two games.

“Lady luck has seemed against us at times,” admitted Izzet. “The ball has run nicely for the opposition to get tap-ins in the last two and to get that goal chalked off at such a critical time of the game at Charlton was hard to take. There’s nothing you can do about things like that though, you just have to dust yourself down and go again.

“If we keep performing like we did on Tuesday then we know got no chance of winning games, but if we keep performing like we have done this season and can add some goals to it then things aren’t bad at all.

“Confidence isn’t low in our dressing room. I can assure you people are ready to go again and we’ll try and kick-start a real good run of form.”