Chris Porter insists Colchester United’s dream of staying in League One is still very much alive after hitting their winner at Blackpool.

The experienced forward’s second-half strike sealed the U’s a well-deserved 1-0 victory at Bloomfield Road to earn them a third win in four matches and continue their upturn in form.

Colchester are eight points from safety with five games remaining but despite the magnitude of the task ahead, Porter is confident they can pull off yet another unlikely escape act.

And if they do manage to stay up, the striker believes it will be an even bigger achievement than last season when they avoided relegation on a dramatic final day.

He said: “The dream’s still alive.

“It’s in our hands and I think if we win every game we stay up, so that’s what we’re aiming to do.

“There’s no reason why we can’t, with the players we’ve got and the way we’ve started to play.

“We’ve got to believe and hopefully we’ll do it.

“Last season was a massive achievement for us to stay up and the feeling I had at the end of that (Preston) game was something I’ll never forget.

“This season, I think it’ll be an even bigger achievement if we stay up, because of where we were a few months back.

“It’s been a tough season off the field with what’s happened with the managers – that was a tough period to get through.

“But I think things are finally clicking and hopefully, we can win our last five games.”

Porter’s volleyed winner came on the hour mark at Blackpool and Colchester were worthy of their win, having been the better side throughout the basement battle.

“It bobbled back to me, bounced up nicely and I managed to volley it in,” added Porter, who has now scored seven times for Colchester this season.

“We do a lot of volleying in training and it was nice to connect cleanly and put it into the bottom corner.

“We played some great stuff – we were much the better team and it should have been more in the end but it was a great result.

“I thought we played some really nice stuff and a neutral would not have thought that we are where we are in the table.

“But sometimes it’s tough when teams sit on the edge of the box, because they’re hard to break down.”