Chris Lakey One-time Canaries bad boy Jamie Cureton says Matty Pattison will learn from his mistakes - on and off the field. Pattison, 21, has made national headlines this week after being charged with drink-driving at the weekend, having been arrested the morning after City had lost at Sheffield United.

Chris Lakey

One-time Canaries bad boy Jamie Cureton says Matty Pattison will learn from his mistakes - on and off the field.

Pattison, 21, has made national headlines this week after being charged with drink-driving at the weekend, having been arrested the morning after City had lost at Sheffield United.

Cureton was, by his own admission, hardly an angel during his early days at Carrow Road when, after breaking into the first team at the age of 19, his career failed to take off and he found himself on the move, only to finally return last summer.

“I was never the greatest person as a kid,” he admitted. “I know that, but I feel I have learned my lesson and as long as you do that people will appreciate that you are trying to change - as long as you don't do it again.

“You have to learn from your mistakes and I am sure Patter will. He has accepted his mistakes and he has apologised and as a team we stuck by him and will help him in any way we can.

“It is not good publicity for the club nor for the player, but these things happen, unfortunately, and they will continue to happen, but we stand by him.

“We want him for what he does out on the pitch.”

Pattison's involvement, or otherwise, in tomorrow's visit of Colchester has yet to be confirmed, but Cureton is desperate to feature against his old club, against a backdrop of criticism from his manager, the arrival of new striker Maceo Rigters - and the chance to silence a few Colchester fans who gave him a frosty reception when City visited Layer Road in December.

After scoring in three consecutive games, Cureton has had three blanks - with manager Glenn Roeder unhappy at his late miss against Stoke 10 days ago which would have secured a valuable home point.

“It was after the Stoke game that he said he wanted to bring in a new players, especially a striker,” he said. “I feel I have done well enough, without scoring, but I am hoping I will be involved. If not, I will bide my time and try and get back in as soon as possible.

“If I start then I will back myself to score, as I always do, and to score against Colchester would be massive for me, because of the form I am in and because of the position we are in as a team.

“I took a lot of stick at Colchester - I expected a bit but not as much as I got.”

City's recent slump has seen them drop to 18th, but Cureton says he's confident they have the quality to drag themselves away from the edge of the Championship relegation zone.

“We are confident,” he said. “We know we have got enough here to win football matches - at home it's not been great, but we've played sort of well without picking up results that maybe we've deserved, so we are more than confident that we can finish the job off and get away from trouble.”

It's one of those games that will be labelled “must-win” for both sides. Colchester desperately need points to climb off the bottom of the table and make inroads into the 11-point gap between them and safety, while City need to arrest a seven-game winless run which has seen them drop to within three points of the relegation zone.

“It is massive now,” said Cureton. “Obviously our form has not been great of late and we've slipped back down to the wrong end of the table and obviously they're bottom and it's going to be a massive game.

“They feel if they can beat us they can drag us closer to them and the other way around - if we beat them we pull away from them so it's going to be a bit of a tense affair, I'd say.

“They're in a lot worse position than we are, so three points is massive for them and hopefully that will work to our advantage because they've got to come here and come out and play open football and try and win the game and I think when teams do that we cope better with that and we can exploit the spaces that they leave.

“We are looking forward to it, we know what's at stake and we feel, form wise, we've been good, it's just the results in the last few games so I'm sure we're confident enough to take three points.”