COLCHESTER United boss Joe Dunne says he and his players owe it to themselves and their supporters to produce a positive performance at Oldham on Saturday.

The Irishman described Saturday’s 4-0 setback at home to lowly Notts County as “indefensible”.

He said they had let people down - but that it was vital to “galvanize” and bounce back with a bright display at Boundary Park.

“We let ourselves down, in terms of our performance, and the manner of the defeat was very hard to take,” he said.

“It was indefensible and uncharacteristic of my team this season. But we’ve addressed what we needed to address and we owe it to ourselves and our fans to produce a performance on Saturday.

“We’ve got to make it up to a lot of people in the coming weeks. It’s very important that we stay focused.

“It was a crushing defeat at home against a team below us in the table, but it’s how we respond that matters now. We’ve got to galvanise and push on into the Christmas fixtures.”

Dunne insists that one bad result should not detract from the positive work going in at the club. And he insists there are no issues whatsoever in terms of team spirit.

“We’ve won games when we’ve not been expected to win and lost games we weren’t expected to lose,” he said.

“That happens every season and that’s football - the nature of the beast. But overall our performances have been good this season.

“We’ve gone to a lot of places and picked up results away from home and that takes a lot of courage. We must not allow this one result to shadow the good work that’s going on at the club and we can’t allow it to breed negativity.

“I know there are a lot more positive results to come.”