Jones’ presser
The Thursday weekly pre-match Nathan Jones club presser follows a similar format each week. It is obviously heavily managed and at best we get a look back at how well last week’s oppositon were coached, how well this coming week’s team are coached, and injury news consisting of updates that players are a week less injured than they were last Thursday.
However, Rich Cawley asks the questions that we want answers to.
Such as what happened to Michail Antonio? Is he coming back from Qatar. The answer being no. Antonio will chase the money and the sun. He will join Al-Sailiya to play the rest of the Qatar season, which has 6 games left. Jones feels Antonio was still four weeks away from being selected for Championship football.
But, there is actual injury update news. Matt Godden and Harvey Knibbs will be available after the next international break (week of March 30th), which means the two of them could feature in the last 7 games. I still hold a torch that Godden will play some sort of valuable part to our season.
Otherwise Jones’ squad will see us through until the season’s end. Although, I would suggest it looks very unlikely that Lloyd Jones will feature against Wrexham. He is my first name on the team sheet, but the club need to manage him now so we get the best out of him over the next few months.
In other injury news I read that Micah Mbick will be ready to return to Colchester’s first team shortly. He has missed their last six games with injury. The article has some interesting words from U’s boss Danny Crowley.
Rich Cawley also asked Nathan Jones about the future of Lyndon Dykes. Sounds as if both parties are interested in extending the stay but will get the business end of the season done first before sitting around a table. Dykes did say he’d preferably have his club football sorted before he heads out to North America with Scotland.
I’ve been impressed with the Antipodean Scot. I was in the yes camp when he was signed, and I expected work rate and experience, but he has surprised me with his movement and is clearly a committed and good influence.
Jones also talked about the front line combinations. I would not be surprised to see Charlie Kelman get his turn on Saturday to partner Dykes as the Hollywood Hills roll into SE7.
Finally, the Rick Cawley Substack page is a really good investment of £50/ $70 a year. I highly recommend Rich’s journalistic insight of the club as well as the post match pods recorded straight after games.
Jones, the Manager did suggest that there could be changes for Saturday’s game, and please get over his disagreement with Kelman, who has not played at all well recently, but who has, and particularly at WBA.
Coventry to come in for Coaty, who is not eligible, and, in any case, he is not a midfielder, and find a space somehow for Costella.
We need goals CAFC, and some wins, though one would help, as IMHO both WBA and Leicester will soon have some form, surely.
We need 4 wins and a few draws, and it is hard to see where they are coming from, and surely not CAFC, our points are only going to come in draws, as that will certainly not be enough.
The CAFC way would be to lose both matches to Oxford and Sheff Wed and win against Wrexham and Brum, and we need to start scoring more than one goal to get these wins.
COYR