Colchester United will not appeal Daniel Pappoe’s red card and a three-match ban in a game against Bradford over the weekend, despite the player’s innocence.

Manager Joe Dunne has also confirmed that he may have to bring in another loan player to cover his stretched defence.

“We spent a whole morning reviewing it and I still maintain he has won the ball, but it is the force with which he has won it,” Dunne noted.

“I spoke to two or three governing bodies for advice whether it is worth pursuing and they could understand how I felt in terms of the ball being won because the referee didn’t send him off straight away.”

He added: “He goes over to Mark (Yeates) and sees how he is injured and makes his decision then. It wasn’t a red card straight away.

“We think he went on a shout from another official on our side of the pitch looking down on it and we don’t have footage from that angle. The wording used is ‘excess force’ and once they use that you are in trouble unless you have other footage.”

“I need to keep Magnus (Okuonghae) and Tom (Eastman) fit and tailor their training programmes to that because we need them on the pitch. I was told we wouldn’t win an appeal. It’s unfortunate because we have lost a player for three games and, with Josh Thompson also out, I now have no cover at centre-back.

“I may have to use the loan system again to get cover. If either of them get injured today, I’ll have something done,” Dunne pointed out.