Having lost the game against Accrington this weekend four one, manager Mark Yates has admitted we cost ourselves with sloppy defending.
Speaking to the Crawley Observer in his post game press conference, Yates had to credit the side for their first half performance and the way they were playing with good effort on show, but he knew after the restart we cost ourselves with the goals we conceded to the hosts.
‘We were excellent first half, we were nice and compact and organised. We looked a massive threat with Gwion. He scored a great goal. I thought he could have done more with his chances that were presented him. At half-time we didn`t say much, just reiterated what we had done well we needed to do and players said the right things. But second half we didn`t do the right things. Right from kick-off we didn`t get in our right positions and let in a sloppy goal.’
With three sendings off in the game, Yates addressed those and he knew our own behaviour at the point had been stupid as we should’ve left it to the referee.
‘The sending off – a disgraceful challenge from their lad. They were saying on their bench he was bundled over in the build-up, but it doesn`t mean he can go and do that – it doesn`t mean he can straight-leg one of my players. The referee`s only got one decision to make but we go and cloud his judgement. I genuinely feel the referee, linesmen and everybody lost the plot for two or three minutes. We decided to try to show we were bigger men than they were instead of being professional and getting on with it. Why not try and play them off the park playing against ten men and let`s win the game? We let ourselves down in that respect.’
Yates went on to talk about how the game played out when it came to behaviour and that particular incident in the game.
‘My best defender (Jon Ashton) had to go off the pitch from a tackle and Walts (Simon Walton) was sent-off for throwing a punch. I have watched it 20 times and I can`t see Walts throwing a punch – he was miles away from it to start with, there might have been a case for someone else being sent-off but Walts went in there to break it up. It was pandemonium out there. Their substitute keeper ended up running on the pitch. Why can`t the fourth official stop that? Their bench was an absolute disgrace. We`ve lost our best defender and our linchpin at the back for half an hour of this game and the next three more games and that`s very hard to take. The game opened up like we didn`t want it to and we reverted to type and conceded some really, really poor goals.’
Crawley have now also confirmed that Walton’s red card will be appealed on the basis of mistaken identity having studied replays.
Chief executive Michael Dunford explained.
‘We have done that. We have registered an appeal this morning for wrongful dismissal. I`ve seen the footage. The player categorically refutes that he has thrown a punch. The referee took it on the say-so of the assistant referee, who was probably 40 or 45 yards away from the incident, so how could he say it was Simon Walton? There was probably 12 players involved at one point. We have registered an appeal for wrongful dismissal and I should think that will be adjudicated by the middle of this week.’
