Colchester United goalscorer, Jabo Ibehre, believed that his side should have been awarded a couple of penalties during Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Leyton Orient.

Centre forward Ibehre, who netted his second goal of the season with a 35th minute equaliser, thought that the U’s had a good case for a penalty in either half, for fouls on Ryan Dickson and Drey Wright. “I feel we definitely should have got a point,” explained Ibehre.

“It was good to come up against the pace-setters and see what they were like, and I didn’t think there was too much to choose between the teams. “We can take that as a positive for sure.

“But a couple of decisions could have gone our way, in the sense of penalties.

“Drey Wright was blatantly obvious, and also in the first half with (Ryan) Dickson.

“The referee is employed to make those decisions, and it’s sometimes quite obvious when it’s something like that.

“But that’s the way if goes. It might fall for us another time, it’s swings and roundabouts,” added Ibehre. The 30-year-old, who began his professional career at Leyton Orient, was disappointed with the manner of the two goals conceded. He continued: “We are disappointed, because we applied ourselves quite well.

“We’ve been doing well and we had wanted to keep that momentum going.

“We did a lot of research on how they had scored their goals this season, and they scored just like that, which was so disappointing. “But we are an enthusiastic bunch and we will put it right next time. We are creating chances and it’s still early days.

“We want to bounce back. We have a Trophy game (away at Dagenham & Redbridge tomorrow), to get back to winning ways, and also get our fitness up ahead of Coventry on Sunday.

Meanwhile, stalwart Kem Izzet has announced that he will be leaving the club, by mutual consent, so ending a 12-year association with his beloved U’s.

The 32-year-old midfielder played more than 400 games for the U’s, and was club captain for much of that time, having originally arrived from Charlton in 2001.

Izzet’s last appearance was as an 87th minute substitute on the final day of last season, a 2-0 win at Carlisle which secured the U’s League One status for another campaign.