Colchester United head coach John McGreal has told The Green ‘Un 24 that he is not devastated despite a 3-0 win over Lincoln City not being enough to get them into the Sky Bet League One play-offs.
The U’s knew they were at a big disadvantage going into the final game of the season. They not only needed to win this match if they wanted a chance to get in the play-offs but they also needed results go their way to make sure they finished in the top seven. To make things worse, they had to beat League Two champions Lincoln.
However they delivered on that last front. Colchester started fantastically with a goal from Brennan Dickinson before Sammie Szmodics doubled that lead. An amazing first half was capped off with Szmodics getting a second after he reacted quickest to a free ball in the box. They looked set for the play-offs until a late goal for Newport County meant they would have to settle for 8th place.
After the match, McGreal said: “I am not devastated, far from it,”
“First and foremost, I want to talk about the performance because I thought it was outstanding.”
“From the first kick, we were excellent. We have come to the top-of-the-league team and they’ve been booed off at half-time, which was a bit surreal.”
“I never come across that before, a team who are champions being booed off at half-time. But that’s modern-day football – it can be very fickle.”
“I thought we absolutely battered them, and we could have scored more than the three goals we scored in the first half, with Mikael (Mandron) also having a couple of shots.”
“It was a great performance, but obviously results elsewhere did not help us with Newport’s late equaliser. That has really hurt us.”
“We are gutted to miss out on the play-offs, that’s happened to me twice in the last three years now.”
“It’s time to move on this summer, get transfers sorted out and chase some of our targets.”
“I still think it’s been a fantastic season, breaking the 70 points barrier, getting 20 wins and keeping 19 clean-sheets,”
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