MIKAEL’S MISSION
Colchester United striker Mandron eager to hit the goal trail
FRENCH football may be making the loudest noise across Europe, but away from the glitz Mikael Mandron is working hard to forge a career on this side of the Channel.
After a frustrating spell with Championship side Wigan Athletic, the 22-year-old striker is determined to show his talent in League Two with Colchester United.
Mandron certainly has pedigree having played three times in the Premier League with Sunderland, the club he joined from ACBB in his hometown of Boulogne-Billancourt when he was 16.
Lucky
“It’s a really good boys’ club competing against all the best teams in the country,” Mandron told The FLP. “Loads of scouts would come and watch our games. Georges-Kevin Nkoudou who is at Tottenham now was one of our team-mates and I played against players like PSG midfielder Adrien Rabiot.
“I was lucky that there was a scout there who saw me and I went on trial to Sunderland for a week. After that I signed. I was 16, which isn’t so young, so it wasn’t too difficult leaving home.
“I wanted to play football and I knew if I was ever going to sign for a club I was going to have to move home. It just happened it was in a different country.
“So it was great, although it was completely different – the tempo of the game and the way we play. I really learnt a lot at Sunderland. It’s a great football academy for young players.”
Mandron made his Premier League debut against Aston Villa when he was 18 before loan spells at Fleetwood, Shrewsbury and Hartlepool before he left the Stadium of Light with three top flight first team appearances to his name in search of regular games.
Ambitious National League side Eastleigh gave him just that and he repaid them with 15 goals in 33 games.
Just six months later, in January, Wigan came calling but he only played three times before leaving in the summer to sign a two-year deal at Colchester.
“At Wigan I wasn’t playing as much as I wanted to and that’s why it was important for me to get a club where I was going to play regularly and be able to improve,” Mandron said. “The best way to improve and get the best out of me is to be playing every week.
“That has been the case so far and I’m going to make sure I work hard so it stays that way. It was the same at Eastleigh – I was playing every week and that was good.
“Of course Wigan was a step up from Eastleigh. The thing that didn’t work out for me was that Warren Joyce signed me and then he got sacked about six weeks after. I played two games under him and if he’d stayed I might have got a better chance to play.
“When he was at Manchester United I used to play against him when I was at Sunderland so he knew exactly what I could do on the pitch. But that’s football. Things change, it happens. You have to just learn from it and be ready to step down and start over again. In football you’re always going to have ups and downs – you have to deal with them.”
Learn
Mandron has played every game so far and scored his first in the 1-1 draw with Stevenage in mid-August.
The U’s, who signed striker Nicke Kabamba, 24, on loan from Portsmouth on deadline day, missed out on last season’s play-offs by a point.
They got their first win of the season in last week’s 5-1 drubbing of Forest Green Rovers and Mandron says it’s the injection of confidence every club needs in the early knockings of a new campaign.
“In every game we’ve played, if you look at the game, it could have gone either way easily,” he said. “When we drew against Stevenage, we probably could have won that game.
“But against Forest Green it was nice to get five goals and a comfortable win. It’s always good for the morale and the confidence.”