JOHN McGreal has called for his Colchester United side to react better when they concede goals after they were beaten 4-0 at Brighton and Hove Albion tonight.

The U’s more than held their own for over an hour of their League Cup first-round tie at the Amex Stadium and frustrated their Championship hosts.

But after Sam Baldock gave Brighton a 64th-minute lead, a brace from Jamie Murphy and a further strike from Elvis Manu gave the Seagulls something of a flattering victory and condemned Colchester to defeat, prompting boss McGreal to urge for a stronger mentality from his side.

McGreal said: “We conceded and then we’ve gone on to concede quick-fire goals and we have to change that mentality.

“That was the debrief after the game really.

“You’re going to concede goals but it’s how you react to conceding them, albeit we were at Brighton.

“But we’re going to concede goals in the league and it’s how you react to it.

“I don’t think we reacted in the right manner and you can see that if you look at the result, because it’s ended up 4-0.

“We’ve come away thinking “how have we ended up losing that game 4-0” because we’ve done so well for 64 minutes but that’s the position we’re in.

“There’s a lot of work for us to do on the training ground.”

Colchester’s best chance of the tie fell to Sammie Szmodics, who headed over unmarked on the half hour from Brennan Dickenson’s accurate cross.

McGreal added: “After 64 minutes we were quite pleased and if you think about the chance that Sammie Szmodics had in the first half, we could have gone in at 1-0.

“They had a lot of shape and possession but I thought the positions that we took up throughout that 60 minutes were excellent and the game plan was working.

“But they have quality players in attacking areas who can hurt anybody and when LuaLua picked up the ball, within five seconds we were 1-0 down.”