Danny Cowley, the manager of Colchester United, was visibly upset with his team’s performance following their 4-1 loss to Doncaster Rovers Wednesday night.
The U’s went into the game at the JobServe Community Stadium knowing a point would have been enough to guarantee their League Two status for another season. They looked good value after just nine minutes when Jayden Fevrier handed the home team an early lead. However, their advantage lasted just five minutes when Luke Molyneux levelled before Harrison Biggins put Grant McCann’s team ahead shortly after.
In the second half of the campaign, Doncaster emerged as the unexpected star of the show and demonstrated their abilities. Tom Anderson and Joe Ironside’s goals put the outcome beyond question and moved the Yorkshire-based team into fifth place.
Before the match, Colchester had won two straight games for the first time since November. Despite the fact that their opponents had won nine straight games before the tie, they had a lot of confidence that they could win. However, they quickly returned to Earth and now have a nerve-wracking last day on Saturday.
Cowley, who replaced Matthew Etherington in January and has seen an improvement, was incensed by the performance. Following the match, the former Lincoln City manager spoke with Gazette News and stated:
“We had a difficult night.
“In a game where we allowed four horrendous goals to be scored, we have the capacity to injure and destroy ourselves.
“They had three attempts at goal, two from 30 yards out, and for 75 minutes, the score remained 2-1, but they were winning the match for some reason.
“We thought we shouldn’t have been down 2-1 at halftime since we had performed rather well. They wanted to hold onto what they had, not even try to score any more goals while we were in complete control.
“I’m furious because it’s been a damaging and extremely frustrating night. We just performed the fundamentals so badly.
On the last day, Colchester is still three points ahead of Sutton United. Their relegation rivals will be visiting MK Dons, and they will be heading to Crewe Alexandra. Despite appearing formidable on paper, the Buckinghamshire-based team is unable to go any better than fourth and would be inclined to rest players in front of their play-off semi-final match early in the following month.
Although it was always going to be difficult to defeat a side that has forgotten how to lose, Danny Cowley would have preferred to have completed the task last night. With a three-point advantage and a higher goal differential, they are strong favourites to stay up. But League Two is never short of shocks, so there might be one more turn in the story still.
Colchester needs to go all in at Mornflake Stadium since they can’t depend on other outcomes. Today is going to be a stressful last day.
