'Be patient' - Crawley Town boss' request as he 'constantly works' on finding out his best XI

The Reds saw a number of high-profile departures from last year’s promotion-winning side – including eight who played at Wembley – but have seen 21 players come in the door.

And Lindsey’s side have had a mixed start to the season, winning two and losing two of their opening four League One games.

We have seen few changes in the starting XI in those games but with the likes of Dion Conroy, Harry Forster and Gavan Holohan coming back from injury, it’s still unclear what Lindsey’s best XI is.

"I think that you are constantly working that out,” Lindsey told us, “even when a team is not a new team.

"You're always looking at where we can shift things about and maybe have a different way of attacking or a different way of building, a different way of defending. I've got a group of players that's been given to me that we can mould into a winning formula. And it’s a team that the supporters can be proud of again.

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“And yes, we had two really good results in the first two games and then we went to kind of poor results, so it potentially might be like that to start with, because of it being a new group. it might be up-and-down at times but we're hopeful that given the hours and the time on the training ground that we can eventually see a bit of continuity i.e. with the starting team and also with the way we play.

“I think there's been times where we've looked amazing, certainly the Wigan game didn't win. And then we've looked not amazing, which was a week after against Barnsley, so I think we're gonna get that little bit. I just ask for people to be patient with it.”

The 3-0 defeat to Barnsley was the end of an intense initial schedule which saw the Reds play Saturday/Tuesday from the start of the season.

And now after a two-week break, they now just have Saturday fixtures for the next couple of weeks. So does Lindsey that welcome time on the training ground?

“I'm not going to say, ‘I prefer that’. I don't want to be negative about when we play on a Tuesday, because I think that it is what it is and we have to prepare the team accordingly, no matter what and then recover accordingly and get ready for the next one.

“If it’s Saturday to Saturday then we can potentially get more work on the training ground and more coaching into them. But, listen, players improve by playing games as well. We’re happy for it to be Saturday Tuesday. I think normally when you play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, it's normally the third game you see fatigue.

"Obviously you saw the Wigan game, we played really well. We then go to Brighton, we play really well and then we're poor on the third game, and I think that is a factor that I have to maybe consider moving forward about maybe making changes in the third game if we do play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday.”

It’s no shock to anyone that the top five in League One are Wrexham, Stockport, Barnsley and Birmingham but Lindsey says it’s too early to look at the table and get a true reading of where we will be come end of April.

He said: “It’s probably too early to look and judge and think, ’that's probably where everybody will be’. So I don't think it would be and I don't think it will be. I think it is a long way to go obviously, but Ido think that the likes of Wrexham and Stockport will be potentially in and around where they are now.”