David Artell felt his Grimsby side fully merited their 2-1 victory at fellow play-off hopefuls Colchester.
Evan Khouri scored Grimsby’s 76th-minute winner when he clinically fired in from Luca Barrington’s pass following Tom Flanagan’s mis-control, after the Colchester captain had been deceived by the unpredictable pitch.
Owura Edwards had struck a 51st-minute equaliser for Colchester when he collected Jack Payne’s pass on the edge of the area before planting a left-foot shot in off the far post, after Grimsby had taken the lead less than a minute into the second half when Kieran Green converted Khouri’s cross from close range.
Seventh-placed Grimsby moved four points clear of their opponents – and Artell’s former club Crewe, who play on Saturday – and he said: “It’s obviously a big win.
“Colchester are the form team in the division and have been over the last 20-odd games.
“We’ve gone to the top of the league (Walsall) and beaten them and now we’ve gone to the form team and deservedly beat them.
“Colchester are a good team, make no bones about it. They play with intensity, tempo and have some good players, but so have we and I thought we stood up to all their threats.
“If anything, I thought we should have won the game by more.
“It’s a good win – I thought we had a group of players who were really committed.
“We scored two cracking goals and as a coach, when you’re putting a game plan together and you show them things and practice some things and they have the skill and the courage to execute it, that doesn’t half give you a nice feeling.”
Colchester goalkeeper Matt Macey had made good saves to deny both Barrington and Harvey Rodgers before Khouri struck Grimsby’s winner.
It was a second successive defeat for the Us and their first home loss since January.
Colchester boss Danny Cowley said: “Grimsby were the better team. They outplayed us and their style on this surface was very effective.
“We have to accept that we didn’t get to our levels, particularly in the second half.
“It’s so frustrating for us and it’s so hard to have got the team into this position – there were nearly 7,000 people here.
“We haven’t used excuses to this point and if we want to be weak we can moan about the pitch, for sure, but we’ve had our success from being strong and resolute and by being determined and by outplaying the pitch.
“We know it’s a challenge, particularly when we play against teams like Grimsby who are really direct and purposeful and played forward and we don’t have the players to play in that style – we have to play in our own style.
“We’ve managed up until today to do that well in spite of the pitch.”
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