Colchester United v Luton Town

[Laker]

Awful for Luke. Gutted for him. Whatever my thoughts were on him leaving, no one could wish this on anyone.... just horrific. :-(

 

[That Fat Centre Half]

It is a huge blow to lose Berry, he is literally I think just about the best player you could possibly get at this level to play in one of those 2 midfield box to box positions that we play with our diamond. Great combination of tenacity and ability on the ball. No shock that when he got into the side is when we really kicked on to the next level, and likewise his slight dip in form has coincided with our poor run.

Unfortunately its that tenacity in getting the ball back has bitten him today. A huge shame, I really hope he has a speedy recovery can come back the same player.

 

[dedwardp]

Wasn't there today as away this weekend, but best wishes to Luke Berry. My dad text me to say he'd never seen anything like it with the players all leaving the pitch, seems very serious.

 

[That Fat Centre Half]

Yep, similar to Hurst's mismanagement of Grimsby's very decent squad back in the Conference years.

While I usually tend to agree with TFCH's views, this time I think he's wrong. All football sides* suffer from the stuff he's taking about - injuries, bad refereeing decsions, etc.

*bar cheating Accy.

Only just read this Vanni.

Honoured that a respected member of the forum often agrees with me! If only the wife did!

To clarify my post, Im not suggesting that those things dont happen to all sides. Of course they do! Its just ours seem to have come all at once in this poor run in the past 2 months or so. Without wishing to tempt fate for Monday as who knows what other ridiculous thing we are going to do to shoot ourselves in the foot, pretty much the only thing we hadnt done, is lose a key player to a serious injury, and that happened today!

Its like we used up all our good fortune pre Christmas and its biting us on our arse now!

Im not saying its all that though, and its true that you make your own luck, some of the things that have happened have been very much self inflicted wounds. A lot of that is to do with our preparation for this period which I think Jones needs to look at himself. We have tightened up as we have got closer to the end of the season and games of real meaning have started to come up, personally i think its where his intensity gets the better of him. I think he hypes them up too much and they play scared a little bit. You can see they are playing with more pressure now and the difference between how we play now to pre Christmas is stark IMO.

We are certainly not able to grind out results when not playing great as Accrington do. In fact we have never been the sort of side to do that since Jones has been here and that is why we aren't top, and likely wont get back there.

Basically what im rambling on about is that this whole second half of the season has been the combination of that little X factor we had going pre Christmas running out, and Jones mismanaging the preparation for the end of the season. I have said it often of late but there is no way that this group of players should be performing as it currently is, it is far better than it is showing.

 

[Maple Hatter]

Difficult to summarize this game as Berrys injury clearly had an affect on the players to the extent that they couldn't get any kind of game going. It wasn't just the number of missplaced passes, not marking their men and allowing two very slopping goals but their body language was all wrong. They obvioulsy had their minds on Berrys injury. I'm sure we wouldn't have conceded those goals had the incident never happened. After the second goal it was game over and to be honest I was relieved we went in only two down. The second half was always going to be a different game. A chance for the team to take stock and discuss what happened. Colchester sat back and we pressed forward but clawing back the two goal defecit was never going to happen. I'm not so much concerned about this game but more about why we have fallen away of late. NJ talks about the same problems every week yet they are still happening. In fact he talked about the same problems last season. I think what's worse is the fact that we lack any kind of consistancy. Very similar to last year in fact when we fell away during the same period. We are letting teams dictate early on and letting them impose their tactics on us which means we play a style which isn't suited to our game. The result being that we revert back to our old habits of lumping the ball upfield and giving away possession. A waste of talent and something any non league player could do. Sure we could argue we have had a lot of bad luck and bad decisions of late but we shouldn't be in a positon when one goal or incident changes the game. NJ has been given a lot of support from the board. The money from transfers has enabled him to bring in quality. Quality that should be able to perform all season not just half a season. After losing the in the play offs last season I think all at the club knew what was lacking to get promotion. A goal which after our transfer dealings looked achievable. We should really have wrapped it up by now. Instead we are looking over our shoulder and that is something no team likes to do. It creates nervousness and tension among both players and supporters. We know through experience how that can end up and we don't want to go through all that again. A big performance is needed on Monday.

 

[That Fat Centre Half]

Difficult to summarize this game as Berrys injury clearly had an affect on the players to the extent that they couldn't get any kind of game going. It wasn't just the number of missplaced passes, not marking their men and allowing two very slopping goals but their body language was all wrong. They obvioulsy had their minds on Berrys injury. I'm sure we wouldn't have conceded those goals had the incident never happened. After the second goal it was game over and to be honest I was relieved we went in only two down. The second half was always going to be a different game. A chance for the team to take stock and discuss what happened. Colchester sat back and we pressed forward but clawing back the two goal defecit was never going to happen. I'm not so much concerned about this game but more about why we have fallen away of late. NJ talks about the same problems every week yet they are still happening. In fact he talked about the same problems last season. I think what's worse is the fact that we lack any kind of consistancy. Very similar to last year in fact when we fell away during the same period. We are letting teams dictate early on and letting them impose their tactics on us which means we play a style which isn't suited to our game. The result being that we revert back to our old habits of lumping the ball upfield and giving away possession. A waste of talent and something any non league player could do. Sure we could argue we have had a lot of bad luck and bad decisions of late but we shouldn't be in a positon when one goal or incident changes the game. NJ has been given a lot of support from the board. The money from transfers has enabled him to bring in quality. Quality that should be able to perform all season not just half a season. After losing the in the play offs last season I think all at the club knew what was lacking to get promotion. A goal which after our transfer dealings looked achievable. We should really have wrapped it up by now. Instead we are looking over our shoulder and that is something no team likes to do. It creates nervousness and tension among both players and supporters. We know through experience how that can end up and we don't want to go through all that again. A big performance is needed on Monday.

NJ sort of said in his interview but we didn’t look too good prior to the injury. We lost pretty much everything in the air that couple of minute period and they had opportunities to play people in that only just didn’t come off. In fact as Berry was injured it looked to have saved us from having to deal with a dangerous looking attack.

After the injury that pattern of play was repeated. Midfield was almost totally non existent, they won every ball in there and had free run at our defence, not very much unlike the Coventry game.

I’ve no idea why he played Shinnie yesterday, he’s useless in games like that and he has said similar himself in the build up, we were basically playing a man light in midfield until he got the hook which should have been at half time. He’s a decent player but he needs to have the game set up right for him, he’s not the sort of player to battle through tricky conditions.

Don’t want to be too harsh on the bloke , as he has undoubted quality, but he is sort of the epitome of us. Quality player but with little bottle if things aren’t going right, easily out muscled liable to go missing if the pitch isn’t an absolute carpet.

 

[Kenneth E End]

Jonesy said Cuthbert was sick in the changing room.

Not sure how/why he should've carried on from that.

 

[Kenneth E End]

Update on Luke Berry: he has a fractured tibia and dislocated ankle (which inevitably will have ligament damage) and will see a specialist on Tuesday.

That is a horrible horrible injury.

If he can get back for December, he'll be lucky.

 

[mowgli]

Update on Luke Berry: he has a fractured tibia and dislocated ankle (which inevitably will have ligament damage) and will see a specialist on Tuesday.

That is a horrible horrible injury.

If he can get back for December, he'll be lucky.

I hope he can recover from such a dreadful injury, i hate to see any player going through the agony Berry did on Friday.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Awful injury but could have been worse on reflection. I'm no expert so correct me if I am wrong but I believe the fibia is a "better" break than the alternative as the tibia can act in effect as a splint for it as the bigger/sturdier bone of the two.

The ankle I suppose will depend on the extent of the inevitable ligament damage, theoretically a dislocation by itself isn't a leg break level time scale but just looking at the angle his foot was hanging at you wonder how messed up those ligaments might be.

Fingers crossed it's a quick recovery, it really was horrific to see. At the time it looked like a genuine career ended, shocking stuff really even as an iFollow viewer so goodness knows how the players around him must have felt.

 

[Kenneth E End]

Awful injury but could have been worse on reflection. I'm no expert so correct me if I am wrong but I believe the fibia is a "better" break than the alternative as the tibia can act in effect as a splint for it as the bigger/sturdier bone of the two.

It was the tibia that was broken. I'm no doctor, but I think out of all of the bones in that region, that is undoubtedly the worst to break. That alone, could keep you out for 6-9 months.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It was the tibia that was broken. I'm no doctor, but I think out of all of the bones in that region, that is undoubtedly the worst to break. That alone, could keep you out for 6-9 months.

It wasn't the tibia. It's a fractured fibula, which is the smaller bone in the leg.
https://www.lutontown.co.uk/news/2018/march/luke-berry/

Googling it suggests it's an easier break to heal as the fibula does not really have much of a weight-bearing role and is primarily an anchor point for muscle. He shouldn't need a metal rod or anything as that is for tibia breaks so fingers crossed the fracture is less of an issue than the damage to the ankle ligaments.