Crawley Town owners make statement on announcement of John Yems' suspension over 'credible' accusations of discriminatory language

WAGMI United announced the suspension at 3am UK time through their own social channels. Reds fans voiced their frustration at this and thought the announcement should have come through the club's social channels.

Crawley Town director and co-owner Preston Johnson took to twitter with a video message to explain to the Crawley family why the announcement was made like it was.

He said: "I know it's been a challenging time for the Crawley community, we wanted to talk to fans and the supporters about the allegations that were made about John Yems and our decision making process over the weekend.

"We found out about this late Friday here in the United States and while we were gathering information internally, the Daily Mail publised a story that Friday night, we made a decision on the information we had that it would be inappropriate for John to manage Crawley Town Football Club Saturday and decided it was necessary to suspend him while we conducted a further investigation.

"We did in fact speak to John late that Friday night. It was morning time overnight in the UK and we gave him the news but we felt we needed to communicate publicly to our fans as soon as possible after speaking to John.

"As owners we don't always have access to social media accounts of the teams and clubs they own and having acquired Crawley Town Football Club only recently we didn;t have access but those who do were unreachable as they were asleep.

"We decided with the opportunity, that with something coming out potentially from the press and the fans not hearing from our own voices and from other sources we wanted to tweet it out so you heard it from our own mouths from the WAGMI United account.

"Going forward we do have access to the club's social accounts so we will make sure that does not happen again. I know that was something people shared they were not pleased with.

"There's an ongoing investigation that I am not going to be able to speak about further until that process is completed but in the meantime we wanted to be transparent with you guys, the Crawley family and let you guys know what was going on.

Yems, 62, has been temporarily relieved of his duties while the club investigates the claims and was not in the dugout for Saturday afternoon’s League Two trip to Mansfield.

A statement on the club’s official website said: “Late Friday, Crawley Town Football Club was made aware of serious and credible accusations that first-team manager John Yems used discriminatory language and behaviour toward our players.

“We take these allegations seriously and, effective immediately, have suspended him indefinitely as we investigate and consider further punitive action.

“Let us be clear: Crawley Town Football Club stands behind our players, employees and supporters, and we will never tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind.”

Yems was appointed manager in December 2019 and has guided the club to successive 12th place finishes in the fourth tier, the position they currently occupy once again, and they head for Mansfield having won five of their last six games.

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