Colchester United’s players are working with a sports psychologist in a bid to cure the mental frailty that has plagued their start to the season.

U’s boss Tony Humes believes his team are not taking enough individual responsibility in games, in the wake of a seven-match sequence without a victory.

Colchester have trailed in all but one of the league and cup games they have played so far, this season.

And boss Humes wants his players to be mentally stronger.

He said: “It’s the individual mindset of players.

“We have a sports psychologist that the players are dealing with.

“It started at the end of last season and we know what happened then, we got out of it.

“We had all talked about being mentally stronger for what the players went through, last season.

“We’re still waiting for that to happen and that’s the disappointing thing.

“Things don’t just happen - players have to make things happen on the pitch and only they can do that.

“You can work as hard as you can on the training pitch to put practices in place.

“But you can only deal with that as a player when you’re on the pitch.

“We have to be stronger and be able to defend properly.

“It seems to be a mental thing because there’s been a theme of us conceding soon after the start or restart of games.

“It’s also happened after we’ve scored and we have to focus on doing the right things at the right times.

“We do the footballing things very well and the nice things very well.

“But when it comes to doing the horrible things, we’re not good enough at this moment in time to do what we do and that’s down to individual responsibility.”

Humes revealed that some harsh words were spoken in the changing room following their 3-2 defeat at Northampton.

“We had an open and frank discussion (after the Northampton game) and we did after the Fleetwood game, too,” he said.

“We’re very open to talk about things with players and that’s how it’s got to be.

“It can’t only be when things are going well.

“When things aren’t going quite right, that’s the responsibility that’s got to be taken.”

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