Crawley Town owner breaks silence after a week of turmoil at club - read his tweeted statement in full

Fans have been left angry and frustrated by a week that has seen another home defeat, their start player Tom Nichols sold to League Two rivals Gillingham and manager – WAGMI’s fourth since taking over the club in April - Matty Etherington and his assistant Simon Davies part ways with the club.

Further rumours of players being left out of the squad for tonight’s game with Stevenage and other departures of the senior squad imminent, fans have demanded answers from director of football Chris Galley and co-owner and co-chairman Preston Johnson.

And now co-owner Eben Smith has taken to Twitter to have his say. In a stream of tweets, he said: “Hi @crawleytown fans- A brief statement on where we're at and what happens next.

Can you imagine being Gillingham or Rochdale or Colchester right now? Like you guys love chanting at games, "You must be sh*t to be behind us.

"Matthew Etherington walked into this situation with eyes wide open. He signed a contract that explicitly laid out how we were going to do things at Crawley Town.

"Unfortunately, like everything with this project, he experienced a remarkable spell of bad luck, and while I don't believe one moment defines a man, in this case, he chose to leave us without a manger the day before we have two games in four days.

"Some veterans on the team are no longer a part of Crawley Town's future.

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“During our investigation into the claims against John Yems, certain things have come to light, trust has been broken and we cannot repair the rotten culture that preceded us without turning the page.

"Moving on from Lewis Young was a tough decision and I take responsibility for that. Lewis had stabilized the team. I went to meet with him after the Bradford game and he expected he was going to be named the full-time manager.

"In that meeting, I explained that we weren't ready to pull the long-term trigger because we had certain concerns. I explained to Lewis how he would be evaluated the rest of the month and what the organization's goals were.

"We got outshot 87-28 over his five remaining games. He expected a decision by the end of November and given the evidence, we thought there was a better chance we'd be relegated with him than without him.

“We might have been wrong.

"We were definitely wrong to put our trust in Matthew.

"Tonight, according to bookmakers, we have an expected value of .56 points as 8-1 underdogs. What a great situation to be in. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. And freed from the shackles of the past.”