Crawley Town must move on quickly from a week for fans to forget

Two English defeats to South African opposition and one to Afghanistan, plus ten goals let in by Crawley Town and only four scored in return.

I went to both games last week, giving up watching England beat Italy on the telly to qualify for next year's Euros for a trip to Worthing, and also watching Crawley on Saturday losing to Jack Powell’s Crewe.

In both games Crawley took the lead twice, and in both games surrendered rather tamely in the second half, allowing Worthing to progress in the Sussex Senior Cup and letting Crewe take the full number of points back to the north-west.

The Tuesday game at Worthing saw Adeyemo score twice in the first half to put us 1-0 and 2-1 up respectively.

Even when we went 3-2 down just before the break, I was fully confident that we would turn it around, but then injuries to Ransom and Adebayo and a lack of discipline from Johnson, earning him a red card, put paid to that optimism and we went down all too easily 6-2.

Worthing fielded half of the team that played the previous Saturday to beat Bath City, whereas we made ten changes from the team that had lost to Wrexham the week before.

I am not a football manager but, perhaps if we had used the same approach to the game as Worthing, we would still be in the Sussex Senior Cup.

Perhaps Scott Lindsey had been distracted by all the rumours coming out of Kent; however it certainly didn’t show on Saturday when Klaidi Lolos, starting the game, swept the Reds into an early lead.

It didn’t last long though as Crewe took full advantage of us giving the ball away in midfield to equalise just eight minutes later.

With Powell returning to Broadfield Stadium for the first time with Crewe, it soon became apparent that his habit of not being able to get a corner over the first defender has seemingly been coached out of him.

Ronan Darcy sent us into the break 2-1 up with a tremendous shot but unfortunately Crewe took the three points with two goals of their own and one own goal scored by Dion Conroy in the second half.

It was a disappointing result which seemed to come about after what looked like a bad injury to key man Liam Kelly and the substituting of Darcy, who for me seemed to be playing really well.

I am prepared to take some of the blame for this defeat, having pointed out our good home record and their poor away record in my previous article.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the news came through about Sir Bobby Charlton and then South Africa beat England in the rugby, albeit by only one point.

When I was 14, a long time ago, my dad took me to see England v Mexico in the World Cup, and we were lucky to be standing directly in line with Bobby when he unleashed the shot that started our journey to World Cup glory. Sir Bobby, RIP.

And it is only right I mention the passing of Neil Le Bihan, who played for Crawley in 2002/03 making 43 appearances. Neil Le Bihan RIP

The column was written before the Reds earned a point at Walsall in midweek – read the report here.

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