Colchester United manager Danny Cowley gave his reaction to Col U TV following the 1-1 draw with Tranmere Rovers.
The U’s have picked up four points from a possible six over the Easter weekend having beaten Newport County on Good Friday.
When asked whether those four points are a good return, Cowley said, “Yeah, I think so. I think we set out to win the game. I don’t think we had the start we wanted, we lost the ball too often too early. As a consequence, we allowed a good Tranmere team to find their rhythm.”
The former Portsmouth boss believed that his side’s inability to keep the ball brought problems in other areas, “Because we were unable to look after the ball in the early period, we then had to run and you lose a little bit of power in the duels and we had to navigate through that difficult start.”
He was, however, happier with how his side grew into the game, saying, “I thought from probably 30 minutes onwards we were then able to connect some passes and get some control. From 30 minutes onwards we had good control of the game and dominated the ball in their half.”
Tranmere opened the scoring after just seven minutes thanks to Kieron Morris before Colchester hit back a minute later thanks to Alistair Smith.
When asked about the goals, Cowley was disappointed with how his team helped their opponents but was pleased for Smith.
“Yeah, I think two really good goals. We were disappointed how we lost the ball and they progressed really quickly down our left-hand side and Apter put a brilliant cross in and it was a good header.”
“But, a really good response from us and a brilliant strike from Alistair Smith. He was threatening that on Friday, he’d hit the bar, he’d had that brilliant save that looked like it had gone past the goalkeeper and the Newport County keeper just tipped it wide. It was a really good goal.”
The 45-year-old was pleased with how The U’s came through a difficult opening and took control of the game.
“We had to show a lot of resilience in the first period which often you have to do when you’re the away team, particularly when you come to a big stadium like this.”
“We did that and we came through it and second half I thought we were the better side.”
Defensively, the Londoner was pleased with how Tranmere was restricted to efforts from range and discussed the chances his men had.
“They had a lot of shots didn’t they from outside the box which normally says you’re defending well, if you’ve got good defensive organisation often the opponent takes shots from distance because they can’t break you down.”
“We had a really good chance. I think firstly, I think Ellis did brilliantly on the left-hand side, he has a good shot and I think then Bradley has a really good chance and then Cam McGeehan also has a really good chance leading into halftime.”
“We took confidence from that, we made a little tweak bringing Noah Chilvers on and second half I felt like we found our rhythm.”
Attacker Samson Tovide was initially named among the substitutes but had to pull out after the warm-up. Cowley gave an update on Tovide’s injury.
“We were disappointed for Samson, disappointed for all of us really. We left Newport County on Friday thinking that Samson might be easy to start on Easter Monday but it wasn’t to be.”
“Unfortunately, he’s felt his ankle a little bit in the warm-up yesterday in training so we wanted him to travel, he’s such an important player to us, but this pitch is a very good pitch but a firm pitch. I think the firmness of the pitch just irritated Samson’s ankle.”
“He is 14/15 weeks post op now and part of the operation he had to stabilise the ankle joint was just a little bit of metal work to pin the ligament and unfortunately that metal work is creating a little bit of irritation around the soft tissue.”
“It just takes a little bit of time for it to bed in and particularly now he’s playing and twisting and turning and changing direction the tissue just feels a little bit irritated and the ankle feels a little bit angry. On the firmness of this pitch, we just didn’t take the risk.”
“Hopefully we can resolve that during the week because he is a very important player to us.”
The U’s boss made changes to the starting eleven and was asked about one in particular, the inclusion of Ellis Iandalo as part of a back three.
“Yeah, I think for us the ambition was to try and win the game. We wanted to try and take the game to Tranmere. I thought Ellis was probably our best player today, I thought he was exceptional.”
“He was exceptional initially on the left of the back three and then he went out to left wingback and I thought he was equally as good.”
“If we are going to play with a back three, we like our centre-halves to be progressive. We saw Jay Mingi being progressive on Friday, I thought Ellis did fantastically well today.”
“Yeah that was one change, obviously Tom Hopper for John, it was good to freshen up the front end of the pitch and bring some energy to that area.”
“That was the thinking behind the changes. I think ultimately we’ll be disappointed we haven’t won given our last 60 minutes of the game but for us, we have to keep being really demanding of ourselves, keep expecting more of ourselves and try to find the complete 90-minute performance. I think that’s what we are working towards.”
Writer’s View
It is yet another 1-1 scoreline for the Cowleys and Colchester United. After a solid point at Mansfield Town and a vital win on Good Friday, U’s fans will be slightly deflated that an Easter Monday point still sees them drop into the bottom two of the Football League.
Three defeats from 14 games in charge is a good return for a side stuck at the bottom of the division. However, Colchester have only won twice during that time allowing Sutton United to leapfrog them this evening.
With three games in hand over Sutton and one over Grimsby Town, The U’s should still feel confident of beating the drop. Danny and brother Nicky will need to find that compete 90 minutes sooner rather than later to ease the nerves.
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