Next Up: Colchester United vs Exeter City

The distraction of the EFL Trophy gave Paul Tisdale a chance to rest some of his weary troops in favour of the youngsters, while the purse strings were loosened slightly to allow Tisdale to make two deadline day loan signings in time for the trip to Colchester on Saturday. With the treatment room continuing to resemble Clapham Junction at rush hour, it’s anticipated that Luke Croll and Jack Stacey will go straight into the line-up while the likes of Moore-Taylor, Woodman and Holmes continue their recovery from injury.

After a few seasons of struggle, Colchester were finally relegated last season back into the fourth tier, and the Us have made an encouraging start to life back in the basement under John McGreal. Unlike City with their injury woes, Colchester have been able to name a settled side with seven ever-presents in the league so far and four more having started four of the five matches to date. They have only lost one league match so far at Portsmouth, but bounced back from that last week with victory at Wycombe. Top scorer so far is defender Ben Dickenson with three, while up front the experienced Chris Porter will be more than a handful for City’s defence.

Saturday will mark City’s fourth visit to the Community Stadium and Tisdale’s side will hope to record their first victory there, having drawn one and lost two so far. The last time the sides met was in the 11/12 relegation season, with the corresponding fixture, on New Years Eve, finishing 2-0 to Colchester against 10-man City, while the return finished 1-1, Jamie Cureton (or at least an Own Goal credited to Cureton!) cancelling out Karl Duguid’s early effort. City do hold the slight edge in league head to heads with 25 wins to Colchester’s 24 (19 draws).

Odds: Colchester 11/10 for the win, 5/2 for the draw and Exeter are 11/4 for the win.

Match officials: http://www.exeweb.com/2016/09/01/match-officials-colchester-utd-vs-exeter-city/

Last time we played at Colchester – http://www.grecians.co.uk/wordpress/?sp_event=4364