Colchester United manager Tony Humes admits his side paid the price for some poor defending after they let slip a two-goal lead to lose 4-2 at Shrewsbury Town.

The U’s led 2-0 at half-time thanks to a Mark Ellis’s own goal and Tom Eastman’s sublime backheel.

But Shrewsbury made a double change at half-time and their substitutes Tyrone Barnett and Sullay Kaikai both scored twice, to condemn Colchester to a second successive defeat.

Humes said: “I think one or two players thought that we’d won the game at half-time.

“It showed in the second half that once Shrewsbury got back into the game we couldn’t pick it up.

“It’s the same old story – you can’t turn a tap on and off and expect to get going again and it’s extremely disappointing.

“There was still a lot of good stuff out there and positives to take but if you can’t defend against a team that puts balls into the box at this level you’re going to struggle, because that’s what teams do.

“It was back to how we defended at Chesterfield.

“We conceded four goals from in and around the six-yard box, just because we couldn’t deal with the physical presence and movement of players.”

Colchester had controlled the first half and keeper Jamie Jones had little to do.

But boss Humes still felt that his side were not at their best, in the opening 45 minutes.

He added: “We were in the driving seat at half-time but I still didn’t think that we were great in the first half.

“I wasn’t overly happy with the performance in the first half, even though we were two goals up.

“I thought we were a bit sloppy in possession and gave the ball away in areas that we shouldn’t have done.

“That was one of the things that we spoke about at half-time but within 40 seconds, we gave the ball away on the halfway line and we got overloaded at the far post and in it goes.

“All of the things that we spoke about at half-time happened in the first minute of the second half.”

For five pages of coverage of the U’s game at Shrewsbury, see Monday’s Daily Gazette.