‘Embarrassing’ and ‘toothless’ – Crawley Town pulls no punches after heavy loss at Swindon Town

​The result marked a second straight League Two defeat for the Reds.

“It was disappointing obviously, and I want to apologise to the fans. For them to travel all this way to see that, it isn’t fair,” he said.

“We just showed nothing really throughout the afternoon. I thought we were really poor in possession, the way we pressed. I thought it was a toothless performance.”

With the scoreline equalling Crawley’s previous biggest defeat in the Football League, a 6-0 loss at Morecambe in 2011, it was a chastening day for players and supporters alike.

Swindon only led 1-0 at half-time, with Crawley having missed several chances to score in the first half.

Lindsey said: “We had chances to score, and if we had scored it would have been a different game. I’m bored of hearing that.

“You’ve got to put your chances away, and we haven’t. And we were poor off the back of it.

“I wanted a reaction from last week, and the body language of the players all week in training has been good, and then we turn a performance out like that.”

Fortunately for the Sussex side, many of the headlines from the match were taken by Swindon forward Jake Young, who bagged four goals.

Former Robins boss Lindsey, however, felt that the defending against Young could have been far better, with frustration at the chances afforded to him.

“The goals were embarrassing,” he said. “Marking in the box is something that I work on tirelessly. There’s four men around [Young], yet he gets between them all and nods it in, the easiest goal he’ll ever score.

“I talk about marking in the box and doing your job properly. The players out there today obviously didn’t do their job properly, and that’s why you come to a place like this against really good side in Swindon and you get punished.”

With Lindsey calling for ‘hard work’ in training to learn from their mistakes, the Reds know they will have extra pressure on their return to action at Stockport this Saturday.