Southend United manager Phil Brown has declared himself pleased with his side's start to the new campaign.

The Shrimpers drew their League One opener at Fleetwood Town, before falling to a narrow defeat against Brighton & Hove Albion.

Despite failing to win either game, Brown believes that there is plenty to build on in the coming weeks.

"Two games into the new season I think you have to say it's been a positive start to the campaign for us," he wrote in his Echo column. "I thought we more than matched Fleetwood on the opening day and should definitely have beaten Brighton & Hove Albion in the Capital One Cup on Tuesday night.

"I watched the DVD of the whole game again yesterday and it didn't change my opinion that we were the better team after the first 30 minutes. I think to begin with we maybe showed Brighton too much respect and it was almost as though we feared them a little bit.

"That's something I think we need to learn from because we are going to be coming up against other big clubs this season and we can't afford to be standing off them like that. We need to take the game by the scruff of the neck because once we did that against Brighton we saw how good we were."

Southend play host to Walsall in their next league outing this coming weekend.