Colchester United: Who's next as League Two club look for stability?

Matthew Etherington was made head coach on a permanent basis on 16 November and left on 1 January

It has been a long time since Colchester United have been anywhere near the top of a table but with the League Two strugglers now looking for their eighth permanent head coach in a little over three years they can boast second place in the hiring and firing stakes.

To be precise, they have gone through seven head coaches in 41 months - a hit rate of one almost every six months.

That is quite some going for a club once seen as a steady ship in the lower leagues and who, in recent memory, spent two heady seasons in the Championship.

For those wondering, only Watford outdo Colchester in the same period.

Of the seven bosses Colchester have had, six were first-timers, and only Matt Bloomfield left of his own volition.

Puzzlingly, John McGreal departed after leading the club to the League Two play-offs with no job to go to and no real, clear explanation as to why.

From that point onwards, Colchester have gone through Steve Ball (now the club's head of academy coaching), Hayden Mullins, Wayne Brown, Ben Garner and now Matty Etherington.

Internal appointments had been the fashion and failed, so owner Robbie Cowling bowed to supporter pleas for some new blood.

They got that with Bloomfield and Garner. The former won just two of his first 10 league games but turned the ship around enough to suggest better times were on the horizon, only to jump ship the moment his first love, Wycombe, came calling.

Change of playing style

Colchester's Boxing Day loss to MK Dons was the first of a run of three successive defeats

Perhaps buoyed by the impact Bloomfield eventually had, Colchester went outside the building again and few argued with Ben Garner's appointment, given his previous experience of League Two was to lead troubled Swindon to the play-offs.

But, under Garner there needed to be a complete change in playing style from that of Bloomfield and the U's eventually fell over the line to EFL survival.

A summer of upheaval saw a raft of new signings, predominantly youngsters, with the average age of the team for one game just 22.

Injuries did not help Garner but his complaints about trying to turn around a losing culture did not go down well and he was sacked after a home loss to Harrogate. This despite retaining the backing of the majority of supporters.

Etherington won three of his first four games at the helm as interim boss, leading to the inevitable elevation of a man who had only joined the club in the summer as under-21 coach.

His only previous experience as a head coach was an ill-fated three match spell in charge of Crawley. He admitted he had to think hard before taking the job, maybe in hindsight the opportunity came too early.

Again, injuries did not help Etherington but giving away chances and goals game after game has led to the inevitable sacking. His tenure was a microcosm of those before him; a side too easy to play against, too easy to predict and too easy to stop.

So, where do Colchester go from here? The trapdoor to the National League is creaking open for a fourth successive season and the next appointment has to be right.

The need for a third head coach of the season tells everyone that all is not well but Robbie Cowling has backed his head coaches in recent January transfer windows to draft in the required reinforcements to stave-off relegation.

The rationale is it is far easier and cheaper to stay in the EFL than it is to rebuild and try to get back up. He is on record as saying the budget this season is in the top seven of League Two.

The club have a well known policy of trying to bring through their own players via their category two academy but of those more recently blooded in the first team, the majority have Premier League academy backgrounds from which they have been discarded.

To many this shows flawed thinking in the policy and the sheer lottery of trying to develop players when the top clubs just hoover-up anyone they see with an ounce of potential.

Time is not on Colchester's side. The clock is ticking on the January window and their EFL status. Can they persuade a Gareth Ainsworth or Gary Rowett to come in and save them? Would Dino Maamria be a good bet given the rescue job he did with Burton last season?

Is Mark Bonner ready to return to football after some success at Cambridge United? Will the eternal link with the Cowley brothers finally come to fruition? Or is there a backroom coach somewhere, capable of getting results?

Whoever comes in will have to make an immediate impact or become the eighth to try, fail and push the club further towards the top of an unwanted table.