Rob Elliot can’t protect Crawley in defeat at Huddersfield

Crawley boss Rob Elliot has revealed why he stopped protecting his players.

Elliot has been keen to keep the heat off his side as they head towards likely relegation from League One amid unrest off the pitch.

But that changed after the 5-1 defeat at Huddersfield on Saturday.

His side were 3-0 down after 16 minutes and it was 4-0 inside half an hour as they slipped 12 points away from safety.

Elliot said: “The start was horrendous. It’s not good enough, not acceptable.

“We obviously didn’t know what Huddersfield would do considering they’ve changed their manager and everything, and they’ve changed their shape.

“But that doesn’t change our concepts, and we just weren’t able to deal with the game for the first 20-30 minutes and end up going 4-0 down to four really poor goals.

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“That’s probably been the issue with us. Ultimately, we concede too many goals. We had some brilliant bits of play, but the goals were really poor from us and we can’t give teams goals at this level.

“It’s just completely not acceptable the first 20 minutes and it doesn’t really matter what happens in the rest of the game, cause the game’s gone by then.

“I’ve taken a lot of stick for it, but I always try and protect the players even if it’s not always my complete thoughts – but it just wasn’t good enough and it hasn’t been at times.

“It’s why we are where we are, and I’ve got to take a huge amount of the blame as well.”

Reds return to action when they host Inigo Calderpn’s Brosol rovers a week on Saturday.

Tuesday (7.45pm)

Isthmian League, south-east: Beckenham v Burgess Hill, Erith v Eastbourne Town, Littlehampton v Croydon Athletic, Merstham v East Grinstead.

Southern Combination, premier: Little Common v AFC Varndeanians (7.30pm), Loxwood v Saltdean.

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The Reds got off to the worst possible start when Joe Taylor scored after just three minutes. He followed up after two Jojo Wollacott saves. It was 2-0 five minutes later when Callum Marshall’s shot rebounded off the post and Charlie Barker could do nothing but put it into his own net.

Then on 16 minutes, Panutche Camara’s poor defensive header from a Terriers corner landed at the feet of Marshall, who fired home. On 29 minutes, after Ben Radcliffe smashed a clearance into Jeremy Kelly, and from the resulting corner Matt Pearson headed home to make it 4-0.

Tola Showunmi, Will Swan and Liam Fraser all had efforts on goal as the first half came to a close but it was a disastrous first half for the Reds.

The home side were happy to let Crawley have more of the ball in the second half with the game already won but Reds struggled to create clear cut chances again.