COLCHESTER United head coach John McGreal has today provided a positive update on the fitness of Luke Norris.

The 25-year-old, who is currently the U's second highest scorer this season with eight goals, has been sidelined since mid-January.

Norris suffered the ankle injury in training but is now on the verge of a comeback, after returning to training this week.

And he could be in the running to be named in the Colchester squad for their home clash with Cheltenham Town, this weekend.

Colchester boss McGreal said: “Luke Norris has trained this week, so that’s been good.

“He’s been out for four or five weeks but at least he’s back on the training pitch.

“He took part in contact training today for the first time in a number of weeks so we’ll continue to assess it.

“He’s been doing a lot of cardio work with Perry (Blanchette) the fitness coach and we’ll leave it until the last minute.

“He’s a goalscorer – he’s proved that especially in the early part of the season and we would love to have that form back."

Meanwhile, Colchester will check on the fitness of another of their forwards, prior to the Cheltenham clash.

Mikael Mandron was withdrawn at half-time of the U's 4-0 thrashing of Northampton Town, last weekend.

The French attacker has started each of Colchester's last five games, in League Two.

“Mikael is OK – he trained for the first time today and we’ll see how he is," said McGreal.

“But you try and stop Mikael from training - you’ll be lucky if you do!

“He’s the first one out and last one in and it’s infectious.

“He wants to be fit – he told me on Tuesday he wanted to train but I had to say to him ‘just slow down a bit!’

“It comes from him having a run of games and doing particularly well.

“He came off at the weekend and we continued that fine form in the second half with different personnel so there’s a couple of decisions to be made.

“He felt it in the first half – he wanted to carry on but precautionary-wise, we had to take him off."