{"id":557951,"date":"2020-07-14T04:32:13","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T08:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/?p=557951"},"modified":"2020-12-28T11:27:23","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T16:27:23","slug":"john-mcgreal-colchester-united-part-company-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/07\/14\/john-mcgreal-colchester-united-part-company-head-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"John McGreal: Colchester United Part Company With Head Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cu-fc.com\/news\/2020\/july\/john-mcgreal-departure\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colchester United have announced<\/a> that they have parted company with head coach John McGreal. The 48-year-old guided the U&#8217;s to the League Two play-offs this season, where they were <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/2020\/06\/18\/cohen-bramall-gives-colchester-united-play-off-advantage-over-exeter-city\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">beaten by Exeter City<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>John McGreal and Colchester United Part Company<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">In a statement issued this morning, Chairman Robbie Cowling has announced that <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ColU_Official?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@ColU_Official<\/a> and Head Coach John McGreal have parted company. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ColU?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ColU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Colchester United FC (@ColU_Official) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ColU_Official\/status\/1282948915629883392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 14, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Club Going in a Different Direction<\/h3>\n<p>In a statement issued by the club this morning, chairman Robbie Cowling confirmed that McGreal was informed of the decision earlier this month due to the club wanting to go in a different direction.<\/p>\n<p>Cowling said: &#8220;The club is going to be implementing a new plan that will see the first team being even more tightly aligned to the academy and that I along with my three other directors (Tony Humes, Tony Ashby and Jon De Souza), felt a change of first-team head coach was required if our new direction was to be successfully implemented.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This last season has been one of the club&#8217;s best seasons for a number of years and John should be very proud of his time in charge of the first-team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>First Job Comes to an End for McGreal<\/h3>\n<p>McGreal permanently took over the reins at Colchester in 2016, having been instilled as the caretaker boss for a short period in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>In his permanent spell, he oversaw 202 matches in total, coming away with 76 wins, 55 draws and 71 losses, giving him an overall win percentage of 37.6%.<\/p>\n<p>This is significantly better than the man he took over from, Kevin Keen, who was sacked after winning just five matches out of 24 between December 2015 and April 2016.<\/p>\n<p>McGreal&#8217;s time at the club will certainly be remembered fondly, not least because he got the U&#8217;s the closest they have been to a return to League One this season.<\/p>\n<p>However, defeat there has ultimately forced the board to take a different approach as they look to get out of the fourth tier.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"VRr_veIvQ196ki6oowSuog\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1194749356\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'VRr_veIvQ196ki6oowSuog',sig:'EZsyDFrKm7iFWWQJIfU5sOvXo9odThYss8KAh874L9A=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1194749356',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colchester United have announced that they have parted company with head coach John McGreal. The 48-year-old guided the U&#8217;s to the League Two play-offs this season, where they were beaten by Exeter City. John McGreal and Colchester United Part Company &nbsp; In a statement issued this morning, Chairman Robbie Cowling has announced that @ColU_Official and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1144,"featured_media":557952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,34,30],"tags":[2677,168,6027,520,6026,136],"class_list":["post-557951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-league-football","category-league12","category-news","tag-colchester-united","tag-efl","tag-john-mcgreal","tag-league-two","tag-robbie-cowling","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}