Interim coach Matty Etherington has provided an update on Colchester United’s hunt for a new manager, in quotes provided by the BBC.
The former Crawley boss took charge of the club on an interim basis following the sacking of Ben Garner on the 21st of October. Prior to this, he had been in charge of the Under-21s. Etherington was the subject of a battle between Colchester and his former club, after part-owner Eben Smith called the club to inform them that there was a potential breach of contract, despite having already taken charge of a game. Scott Marshall was forced to temporarily take charge of their win over Accrington Stanley on the 28th of October. However, U’s owner Robbie Cowling confirmed he would return to his interim duty with immediate effect following a review of his contract in a statement released on the club’s website.
“Following a thorough review of the contract and the events that transpired during the 10 months since Matty’s departure from Crawley, I have made the decision to reinstate Matty as our first team’s interim head coach with immediate effect.”
Cowling also made it clear that Etherington would be assessed on his time in charge of Colchester, rather than his time at Crawley. Since taking charge the U’s have won three out of their three league games and moved five places up the table.
What’s Been Said?
He was asked for an update on the managerial hunt by BBC Essex Sport.
“After the weekend, I think there’ll be some clarity around it, in what way, I don’t know,”
“The conversation at the start was ‘Let’s get to Sutton and go from there.’
“If I have to go back to the 21s, I’ll happily do it. If they offer me the chance to take the [first-team] role on, of course I’ll do it, I’d love to.
“At the minute, I’m just taking the Sutton game, concentrating on that – there’ll probably be some talks after the game on Saturday.”
He went on to discuss the player’s attitude and character shown during his brief time in charge:
“We’ve given ourselves a bit of daylight now [in the league] but a couple of defeats and that can all change,”
“We know exactly where we’re at, we’re not getting carried away by any stretch, but another win against Sutton on Saturday, the situation’s going to start to look a little bit better – definitely.
“I had a brief chat with some of the senior players about various things. There’s a level-headedness about the group because there’s been some difficult times so far this season, they reflect on the pain from those difficult times and don’t want to go back to that point.”
Writer’s View
It is clear there were issues at Crawley that Matty felt the need he needed to exit and exit quickly. The Wagmi ownership group clearly feel aggrieved over this. It would be easy for Colchester to just point at that brief spell and judge him solely on that, but it is good to see they are giving him ample time to demonstrate his abilities.