Crawley Town v Colchester United preview: Reds and U's looking to climb the table in New Year

Games against Oldham, Stevenage and Bristol Rovers were postponed, which means Crawley’s final game of 2021 was a 2-1 win at Leyton Orient.

Colchester’s games against Leyton Orient and Hartlepool were postponed but at the time of writing their away fixture at Sutton United on Wednesday December 29th is still going ahead.

This means the U’s would have played just three days prior to the clash with Crawley, while the Reds have had no game since December 12th.

However, with lots of games across the EFL being postponed due to Covid it still remains unknown if Colchester will face Sutton or even if the fixture between Crawley and Colchester will go ahead.

If it does go ahead Crawley come into the clash in slightly better form, having lost just one of their previous five games.

However, their home form hasn’t been as strong as it has been in recent seasons, as the Red Devils haven’t won on home soil since September 25th.

What does go in Crawley’s favour is Colchester’s league form on the road has been poor, as they haven’t picked up three points on the road since September 10th at Barrow. The U’s have picked up some good wins on the road in cup competitions with wins at AFC Sudbury and Swindon.

Prior to Wednesday’s fixtures Colchester sit in 20th two places and three points behind their opponents Crawley. Both teams do have at least one game in hand on almost every team in the league.

This will be the first time Crawley face a side they’ve already faced this season and the reverse fixture saw Crawley pick up a 1-0 victory in Essex, courtesy of a first half goal from Jack Payne.

Crawley do have the upper hand in the head-to-head between the sides with the Red Devils winning nine of the previous 19 encounters between the sides, with six draws and just four Colchester wins.

Both teams will be using this as a chance to put them higher in the table with games in hand that could see them make a big climb up League Two.