Crawley Town injuries has given players opportunity to shine - and they are taking it

Reds would want to have a similar outcome to the last meeting between the teams, with Crawley coming out as 3-0 winners. But the Imps are not a walkover, with Elliot calling this Crawley’s ‘toughest test this year’, despite Lincoln winless in their last three games.

Although of this, Crawley still have injury problems, something that Elliot has had to deal with since taking over from Scott Lindsey back in October. Jay Williams, Harry Forster, Junior Quitirna, Gavan Holohan, Ryan Sanford, Dion Conroy and Josh Flint are just some of the players out with injuries.

These problems have ranged throughout the whole team in different scenarios - from Connal Trueman having to be loaned from Millwall as the Reds had no keepers, to there being two keepers on the bench for Crawley’s win over Rotherham last week.

Despite all of this, Elliot as seen the positive in this, seeing a chance to use his whole squad and give players who do not play as much a chance to flourish.

Elliot said: “I think also it gives players an opportunity that they deserve and maybe haven't been able to get because of other people playing well or whatever it might be.

“I think Saturday when we had two goalies on the bench and every outfield player was on the pitch, the takeaway was that everyone's in it for the cause, fighting for the cause and going on and doing everything they can for each other.

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“Gav [Gavan Holohan] took a massive whack to his ribs and carried on playing and, yes, Raf [Khaleel] coming on at the end and it's one of those ones where football's... I always say to lads, the team that starts this first game of the season to the one that finishes will be completely different you have to just keep being consistent and keep doing well and one little disappointment on a Saturday could turn into the best Saturday night of your life because you've come on and scored the winner or you're starting the next game or whatever it might be.

“So, hopefully we cannot have as many injuries or we've been unlucky, a lot of them, 80-90% of them will impact injuries, which I think is just the physical robustness of the league. But as we adapt to that and as the players get more opportunities, get more experience, I feel we'll get better, and we'll be able to manage it more.”

Elliot will be hoping for as many players as possible for the important match on Saturday and is getting closer back to a full squad.

On the team news, Elliot said: “I think it is as was. We'll have to assess a few people. A few people like Harry Forster are close to coming back because Harry had a dead leg, so we just have to monitor that. We have to be careful with them once they go past a certain point because they can turn into something more serious.

“A couple of lads might need a bit of rest and TLC with Tuesday as well because you've got to have half an hour on Tuesday. We'll have to assess it but I think we're pretty much as was, to be honest, other than Brad [Ibrahim] coming back from the suspension.”