Colchester United boss Danny Cowley on player interest

The U’s had to deal with plenty of enquiries about their fledgling stars last month, with interested clubs keen to prise them away from the JobServe Community Stadium.

The likes of Jayden Fevrier, Samson Tovide and Bradley Ihionvien have all caught the eye for Colchester this season, leading to admiring glances from rival clubs.

U’s head coach Cowley feels it is a good thing that their young starlets are being noticed externally.

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Cowley said: “We have so many good young players who I’m so looking forward to working with.

“When you have really good players, I suppose it’s like having a really good looking girlfriend.

“When you have a really good looking girlfriend, you kind of know that other people are going to find her good looking as well!

“I quite like this; I’ve got no worry about this.

“I’d much rather it that way than for nobody to want our players – that would worry me much more.

“The fact that we’ve had so many calls on our younger players I think we take as a compliment.”

It is understood Colchester did not receive any firm offers for their young players, in the January window.

But Cowley acknowledges that U’s chairman Robbie Cowling has a clear plan in place, where young players are assets for the long-term benefit of the football club.

“Robbie is just brilliant, because he has a really long-term strategy for the club,” said Cowley.

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“Robbie’s absolute focus is to keep the football club going forward so if and when we do sell players, it’s for the betterment of the club and to reinvest the money and to keep trying to develop and grow.

“He invests so much into the academy and we have a clear way where we’re looking to develop young players to turn them into assets, to then really enjoy them in the first team and for our supporters to really enjoy them and then when the time is right, to sell the assets, reinvest the money and then to try and build and grow as a football club.

“There’s a clear strategy where, in the position that we’re in, we have to respect that the main focus in this window has been staying in this division and any decision that we make is around that objective and achieving it and that ultimately has given us real clarity.”

Colchester brought in four new loanees in the window following Cowley’s appointment as head coach.

Cowley added: “We were able to do some really good recruitment early.

“We had a really clear strategy from the moment we came in to make really sensible, intelligent signings – maybe not too many sexy ones but really sensible ones.

“They’re players that know the level, have played at the level and have been successful at the level.

“If you go through the group, Jayden Richardson has played well at the level, Riley Harbottle was excellent at Mansfield last year, Harry Anderson has won the league and had two promotions, Alistair Smith excelled in the division over the last two years at Sutton.

“We’ve been able to add a certain profile of player to the group in terms of athleticism and physicality and I think it’s been important to support the players that we already have here.”