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Season Preview-Colchester
Season Preview-Colchester
Monday, 11th Jul 2005 00:00

2005/2006 Season Preview - Colchester

2005/2006 Season Preview - COLCHESTER UNITED

Colchester: Essex Stadium: Layer Road Nickname: The U's Hate: Southend United, Ipswich, Gillingham, Peterborough, Northampton, Cambridge & Wycombe. (That's a lot of hate) Last Meeting: 3rd Apr 2001 LD2 Colchester United A L 0-3 Forget the Old Firm derby, the Merseyside Derby, The Milan derby, Real against Barcelona, THE most volatile game in world football is without a doubt the Essex derby, or so I've read, and Southend's promotion via the play-offs has brought this particular game back to the fixture list. Colchester Vs Southend United: sends tingle's down your spine doesn't it? Doesn't it? The scene is set: Thousands of Essex boys and girls thronging the streets in menacing tracksuits and tribal bling, telling each other to 'faahrk orrff' and generally behaving in a very stereotypical 'mockney' manner. Come the 29th of August, the usual Bank Holiday traffic will be swelled with convoys of jacked-up Fords full of partisans making their way down to the seaside to face Southend, their numbers swelled by the army boys from the local garrison out looking for a fight. This season will be the first time since 1990 that these two giants will have played each other in a league game. Ouch! Swans fans will no doubt remember the last time the two teams faced each other at the Vetch because of the sublime performance from a certain Congolese sensation, the fantastically named Tresor Lomano Lua-Lua. He scored a magnificent solo goal in the 0-2 defeat that day, eliciting a generous round of applause from the home crowd. His gymnastic goal celebrations were to become a feature of the Premiership as he furthered his career playing at top-flight level for both Newcastle United and Portsmouth. Since their promotion to League 1 in 1998, Colchester have been perennial strugglers, their best finish being 11th place in 2003/2004, a season that also saw them reach the southern final of the LDV and the 5th round of the FA Cup. Being one of the smallest supported teams in the division has led to the U's struggling to attract top players and to retain their promising players as demonstrated by the departures of Wayne Andrews and Craig Fagan last term. The departure of experienced midfielders Joe Keith and Gary Johnson during this close season hasn't helped the U's preparations, especially with Johnson contributing 10 goals from midfield last time out. Colchester's main weapon against relegation this season will be their highly rated young manager Phil Parkinson. Apparently interviewed by Sam Hammam for the vacant manager's position at financially crippled, laughing stock Championship relegation favourites Cardiff City, Parkinson's impressive work at Colchester with scant resources has won him admirers higher up the league. This season will be another hard test for Parkinson, and another year of having to offload promising youngsters may lead to him looking elsewhere to further his career. Last season the club failed to build on their impressive previous season, finishing in 15th place. They ended the season with a 2-1 home win over Torquay that condemned the Gulls to relegation. This game could well be Fate's way of accustoming the U's to the near certainty of relegation themselves this season. The club have recently made their fist signing of the summer, signing former Stoke, Brighton and Cheltenham striker Chris Iwelumo. Chris has just returned from playing in the German second division, and at 6'4'' he'll certainly cause a few problems to League 1 defences this season. As we know all too well in Swansea, the path to a new stadium can be long and draw out, but if we think we had it bad with the 20-year wait for White Rock, the Colchester situation has been going for over THIRTY years. Things have stepped up a bit in the past few years and the club have finally been given the go-ahead to build a new 10,000 capacity stadium at the Cuckoo Farm site. The provisional estimate for completion is 2007. Until the new stadium arrives, the heroes and heroines amongst you that will be making the trip east to Colchester this season might want to note the following: The facilities are similar to the Vetch in terms of the basics, with Saltergate - fairly or not - regularly attracting votes for the worst facilities in the division. Added to the 5,000 squaddies milling around the place looking for a fight with anything in trousers I'd recommend you tread carefully. Or wear a dress? Then again all the squaddies will want to shag you instead of fight you. It's your call. They will finish: 22nd. And that's bad.

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