COURTNEY Senior insists Colchester United will ‘stick to their principles’ ahead of tonight’s Carabao Cup first-round clash with Swindon Town.

The U’s are hoping to chalk up their first win of the new season when they take on their League Two rivals at the JobServe Community Stadium.

John McGreal’s slipped to a narrow 1-0 defeat at Plymouth Argyle last weekend, despite having plenty of play in the final third.

And winger Senior has stressed they will continue to work hard on the main aspects of their game, as they prepare to host the Robins and make it through to the second round of the EFL Cup for the first time since 2010.

Senior said: “We’ll stick to our principles.

“We’ll play the way we play and we won’t change that.

“It’s still early days and hopefully we can work on it and progress.

“We have a cup game to look forward to now and we’ll be looking to go as far as we can in the competition.

“We always feel confident at the Community Stadium, so we’ll be looking to get the win, 100 per cent.”

Senior did his best to conjure up goalscoring opportunities for Colchester at Plymouth last weekend.

But despite the likes of Tom Lapslie, Luke Norris and Luke Gambin all coming close to finding the net the U’s left Home Park empty-handed, after Antoni Sarcevic bagged Argyle’s winner just before the hour mark.

Senior added: “We played well and our game plan went to plan but we couldn’t score.

“We created a few chances but we just couldn’t find the back of the net.

“When I look back on the game, I don’t think they were much of a threat, at any time.

“I think it was a case of us threatening them, more than them threatening us but we couldn’t score, which was a shame.

“It was a frustrating day but it’s still early in the season so we’ll look at it and work at it from there.

“It’s a tough journey home after a defeat like that.

“Plymouth are favourites to win the league, this season but I feel like we played well and we were just unfortunate not to take something from the game.”