SOUTHEND United manager Phil Brown believes Freddy Eastwood is in the best form of his career.

The striker has scored four goals in his last four games after hitting the back of the net at Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday.

And Brown feels the forward has never been in better shape.

“Freddy’s in the form of his life at the moment for me,” said Brown.

“He’s playing with a lot of confidence, he looks sharp and he’s taking the chances that are coming his way, which is great to see.

“Despite that he was still on the end of a rollicking in the changing room on Saturday after our defeat to Wycombe and he was probably sitting there thinking, ‘why me?’

“But he’s in a team of 11 and we’re not quite taking everything on board at the moment.”

Eastwood’s fourth goal in four games made it his best run of goalscoring form in eight years, when he scored in seven successive games.

But the 29-year-old took little satisfaction from the strike as the Shrimpers failed to take anything from the game.

“I might have scored again but it doesn’t mean anything because we’ve lost the game and I’m frustrated about that,” said Eastwood.

“I’d rather not have scored and us have won the match, so I’m really disappointed.

“In the second half we had waves and waves of attack And we probably had enough chances to not just get a draw but to also win the game.

“Whitey (John White) hit the bar and so did Strakes (Anthony Straker), but we’ve taken nothing from the game and that’s happened two weeks running now, so it’s really frustrating.”

Despite the defeat, Eastwood felt the Shrimpers still produced a good performance at Adams Park, but only after they made a surprisingly slow start to the match.

“We didn’t get out of the blocks well at all and didn’t get to grips with the game early on,” he said.

“I thought a lot of players had a good game but we’ve lost four goals in two games to set pieces now and that’s not good enough.

“The manager isn’t happy and rightly so and now we have to work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Blues will now be bidding to bounce back against Morecambe at Roots Hall on Saturday.

And Eastwood will be looking to score for a fifth game in succession.

The striker has already equalled the four goals he netted throughout the whole of last season.

But when that was brought to Eastwood’s attention, he added: “I’ve probably already equalled the number of games I’ve had as well.”