ESSEX COUNTY STANDARD U's REPORTER SIMON SPURGEON DELIVERS HIS THOUGHTS ON Colchester United IN HIS WEEKLY COLUMN:

If the Roman statesman Cato the Elder is to be believed then ‘patience is the greatest of all virtues’.

In my view they are as relevant today as they were more than 2,000 years ago.

I’m not blowing my own trumpet here, but I do think I’m quite a patient person.

However, patience is not always in evidence in some U’s fans.

This has argubly been one of the best weeks of Colchester’s season after a thoroughly enjoyable win against Walsall and then a pulsating draw against a Peterborough side with the finest home goalscoring record in the Football League.

If that can’t get you thinking positively then nothing will. Yet I have still seen people moaning this week.

I have to say that the more vociferous critics on the internet forums seem to have been more subdued.

I guess it’s not as much fun posting praise compared to having a rant about the manager’s tactics, how the new ground isn’t Layer Road or that the club didn’t transport the Drury Arms to the other side of town.

But the critics will always be there.

In The Iliad, Homer writes the line ‘the fates have given mankind a patient soul’, but I feel he may be inclined to reconsider that if he was sat down with some of the doom and gloom merchants who claim to be U’s supporters.

They may say that their impatience for success is part of the affection they feel for their club, but in truth it can only hurt if their criticism is ill conceived.

It takes time to get to where you want to go and I think that’s exactly the message that chairman Robbie Cowling and manager John Ward have been trying to get across in recent weeks.

As in Shakespeare’s Othello where the embittered Iago says: “How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.”

If you need any evidence that football fans must be patient, then look no further than the turmoil that tomorrow’s opponents Plymouth find themselves in.

They chased the dream of Championship football and I’m sure their fans enjoyed it while they were there, but their current woes would indicate that the foundations weren’t firm enough to sustain their life at the higher level.

The way I understand it, that’s exactly what Cowling and Ward are preaching.

You could throw money at gaining instant gratification by getting promoted and packing out the stadium every week, but is it worth it if it comes crashing down around your ears a few years down the line? Put that question to a Pilgrims fan tomorrow.

There’s a need for patience while things are got right both on and off the pitch and then you can look to push on.

Rapid changes in management haven’t helped find the stability needed for long-term success at the U’s, but Cowling has placed his faith in Ward and while the team may not get it right every game, I think progress is being made.

If there are no perceptible advances a little while down the line, then that’s the time for the critics to sharpen their pens.

Plymouth should be a warning to those who chastise the U’s at the moment.

Let the words of Edmund Burke serve as a footnote – our patience will achieve more than our force.