Crawley Town apologises to Colchester United fans 'caught in the middle of an unfortunate situation' with Etherington saga

The former West Ham and Tottenham Hotspur winger was in charge at Crawley Town for just 34 days before walking out on the club. And last week it emerged he was put in interim charge of Colchester United after they parted company with Ben Garner.

Etherington had been coaching the club’s u21s. But in a strange turn of events he was asked to step down as interim head coach by chairman Robbie Cowling. In a statement Cowling said: “Following a series of phone calls and email exchanges with one of the owners of Crawley Town, I have found myself in a position where I must request that Matty Etherington steps down from his Interim Head Coach role for tomorrow’s game against Accrington Stanley.

“Crawley Town have alerted Colchester United to their concerns that Matty may be tempted to violate the contract he signed with Crawley when he initially accepted their managerial position in November 2022.”

You can read Cowling’s full statement here.

And today Crawley Town released their own statement to clarify the situation and apologise to Colchester fans.

Here is the statement in full: "We want to apologize to the Colchester United fans who were caught in the middle of an unfortunate situation. Matthew Etherington resigned as Crawley Town manager last December and had the following clause in his contract: "The Manager shall not be permitted to bring his Agreement to an end early under this clause to take up employment at or be otherwise engaged by another football club playing in the same or a lower league as the Club is playing in at that time. No buyout will be permitted in such circumstances."

“We were not aware that Matthew had been in breach since June 28, 2023, when he was appointed the U-21 coach of Colchester, until Wednesday of this past week. On Thursday, we clarified his contract with our legal team and alerted Colchester on Friday.

“When we alerted Robbie Cowling Friday, we were told he would provide us zero compensation for Matthew.

“We do not believe Robbie or Colchester had any idea until Friday that Matthew was in breach of the contract he signed with us. We have no problem if he is an under-21 coach at Colchester and if Matthew asks us permission to reassume that role, we'd be happy to grant it.

“We're happy Colchester won on Saturday and we wish Robbie and his team the best in their ongoing managerial search.”