JOHN McGreal is hoping Colchester United’s home clash with Cambridge United today will attract a bumper crowd.

The U’s will go into the match on a high, following their morale-boosting 3-0 midweek win over Swindon Town in the Carabao Cup.

A healthy-sized crowd is being predicted for the meeting at the JobServe Community Stadium and boss McGreal is hoping the home fans can play their part in cheering them to victory, this weekend.

McGreal said: “We’re hoping that a big number of fans will come to make it a really good, lively game.

“It’s a derby as such just across the border so they don’t have to far to travel, so we’re hoping it will be a really good atmosphere and our fans will turn out in numbers.

“It was great to score three goals in front of the South Stand (against Swindon) – we get complaints that we don’t score enough at that end!

“The support in the South Stand is so, so important to the team because once they get going and we can hear it with the drums there and the crowd noise, it does make a huge difference.

“We need to get a better start for them to get cheering a lot quicker but we do need them, because they’re so important to us.

“It’s going to be a tough, tough game when you look at Cambridge and how they’ve started this season.

“They’re really hard to beat and they had a really good performance against Brentford the other night to get through on penalties (in the Carabao Cup).

“They went to Bradford where they had a man sent off quite early in the game and got that dogged point to give them a bit of a boost.

“I’ve got to know Colin (Calderwood) when we played them towards the end of last season, so we know we’re in for a tough game.

“We’re similar to Cambridge in that we haven’t conceded too many and haven’t scored too many, so far.

“But it’s not for getting into those areas and it’ll be a tough game either way.”

McGreal wants his Colchester side to get out of the blocks quickly against Cambridge, as they look to claim a first league win of the season.

He said: “We haven’t started the home games as quickly as we normally do unlike at Plymouth, where I thought we started really well.

“We just need to get into the game a bit quicker and that’s something we’ve discussed together to implement on Saturday.

“We’ve been hard done by performance-wise; I don’t think we’ve got the return that we should have but we can’t rest on that.

“We got our rewards in the end against Swindon, which we haven’t had in our first two league games."

Colchester are likely to again be without Paris Cowan-Hall (Achilles) and Harry Pell (tendonitis) is still sidelined.

The U's will check on the fitness of striker Luke Norris after he was taken off against Swindon because of a hamstring issue.