Colchester boss Joe Dunne spoke to his club's official website ahead of his side's League One match against Carlisle at the Weston Homes Community Stadium tomorrow afternoon, Dunne first talking about a welcome midweek break for the U's this week:
“It has been so intense over the last few weeks in terms of the sessions we have been doing and the tactical work we have been doing so this week has given us a chance to just rest a bit in terms of the players. Having no midweek game has allowed us to develop a different week. I believe in working differently, I don’t believe in having a traditional day off that the players used to get, we tailor the rest time on different days, and especially on one day where productivity is always a little bit low in terms of output from players and staff. So, the good thing is we have got heart-rate monitors that we can look at.
“I am a great believer in the recovery side of the game and this week for example because we go Saturday to Saturday they had Sunday and Monday as recovery days. Tuesday they then trained exceptionally hard, and then another recovery day on Wednesday going into Thursday and today for Saturday. They have special runs based on their fitness levels and so they have high, medium and low and I just tell them to do high, medium or low and they go and do it.
“I think at the moment the squad is stretched now but when I say stretched I mean comfortably stretched as we have one or two options in terms of younger players coming in, but in terms of people going out I think we are about where we are. So, in terms of the squad tomorrow we might have to draft in a few of the younger players, which is no problem to me and then we will pick a team. We can shuffle things around and defenders should be able to play anywhere across the back four in my opinion because a lot of the principles remain the same, so if we have to change it round we will do and we will see what happens.
“What we did against Stevenage last week we also did against Swindon and they were an exceptionally hard working team with good quality. So, that level of performance tomorrow will get us something from the game I’m sure, but then we must not discount what Carlisle can do. So, we will be looking to win the game for sure but I am pretty sure that Carlisle will also think the same. Greg (Abbott) has done a wonderful job at Carlisle and being out on a limb as a club they still seem to get the players in and he has worked his loan market and transfer market really well, and Carlisle are a danger to anybody so we must never underestimate them."