Crawley Town v Exeter City preview: Can Reds stop Grecians' deadly attack?

Back on home soil once more the Reds face a strong Exeter City side on Saturday, who always provide a tough match for Crawley Town.
Exeter City boss Matthew TaylorExeter City boss Matthew Taylor
Exeter City boss Matthew Taylor

It’s the Grecians third consecutive away trip, with trips to Newport County, Colchester United and now Crawley.

Exeter haven’t got too lucky with their games this season, with many being postponed, including last Saturday’s home tie against Grimsby Town.

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This is just one of a few Exeter games that have been called off, which leaves them with a couple of games in hand on some of the teams around them.

Matthew Taylor has got his side in and around the top seven once again but with the league being so tight a few losses could see them drop to mid-table and a few wins could see them in the automatic promotion places.

With a season as crazy as this one anything could happen, but Exeter will only be looking up towards those promotion places and have a good track record of at least making the play-offs. They’ve just missed out on promotion so many times and are always a team that will compete.

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Their deadly attack is a huge part of this success, with them being top scorers in League Two, with Matt Jay and Ryan Bowman combining for many of their goals. Bowman has 12 league goals and Jay has 11, with them grabbing plenty of assists for each other as well. However, they may be without Bowman as he received a red card in their tie against Newport County. Alex Hartridge also saw red in this game which saw Exeter play the entire second half with nine men, where they still managed to secure a brilliant point at Rodney Parade.

The absence of Bowman could be a huge miss for Exeter and Crawley may see the chance to capitalise on them without their leading goal scorer.

The Red Devils always seem to have a close match up with Exeter with the majority of the games between the two sides not having much to separate them.

This was the case in the reverse fixture, where Crawley played extremely well at St James’ Park, only to lose the contest 2-1, which led to some infamous post-match interviews. The Reds will be hopefully looking to claim some points that they deserved in Exeter but didn’t manage to get, due to a poor last 15 minutes.

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Their win last Saturday against Colchester seemed to be a huge relief and a big confidence booster for the Reds who needed a win to stop their poor form. A change of system back to a 4-4-2 that day seemed to make a difference, compared to the 4-3-3 they had been using in recent weeks. Reintroducing Ashley Nadesan and Jake Hesketh into the side made a difference, with Hesketh’s ability to come inside when needed to, being a good asset.

The Reds have a variety of systems they could play with a 5-2-1-2 also being operated this season and this could combat Exeter’s 3-4-1-2 that they sometimes play. Crawley are so difficult to predict how they’ll play due to their versatility in changing shape and personnel.

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