Mvoto gives Latics a lift

I’M BACK . . . Jean-Yves Mvoto is set to start for Athletic in tonight’s game at Colchester.

ATHLETIC aren't the only side in npower League One to be nursing the bruises after a fall from relative grace.

While Paul Dickov's side have now gone 10 matches without getting a dose of that winning feeling, Colchester United's play-off effort has also careered off-track.

Manager John Ward presided over his fourth successive league defeat on Saturday for tonight's opponents (7.45pm kick-off) after Enoch Showunmi's goal was enough to give Tranmere Rovers a slender win at Prenton Park.

Like Athletic, poor results have seen Colchester drop from the outer play-off fringes to the morass of lower mid-table and they now sit 14th, a solitary place higher than Dickov's men.

And also in a similar mode to the Boundary Park club, the Essex club have found scoring difficult.

In their last four matches, Colchester have hit the target only once, through Steven Gillespie.

Aiming to increase that barren sequence at the Weston Homes Community Stadium tonight will be Athletic centre-back Jean-Yves Mvoto.

Tailor-made for a physical bombardment from Ward's side, the imposing on-loan Sunderland man returned to the team on Saturday.He came on as a striker in a 13-minute cameo in the Brighton defeat after arriving back at the club on a deal to the end of the season a day earlier.

Mvoto is likely to play from the start for the first time in more than two months, after suffering an ankle injury, in a more conventional role in the heart of defence tonight to allow teenager James Tarkowski some time to recharge his batteries.

"I think the gaffer wanted me to come back not too quickly and to feel my way back in after three months out," said Mvoto, explaining his role at the weekend after replacing Filipe Morais.

"That is why I came in as a centre-forward, just to have fun.

"The gaffer (Dickov) called me several times asking me to go back here so I told him 'yes', I wanted to come back.

"And now I am here. The Sunderland medical staff were very happy with my leg, so they said I could come back and play."