'Hindsight' - Crawley Town boss says he could have done substitutions differently in Shrewsbury defeat

Crawley lost 5-2 to fellow League One strugglers Shrewsbury, where they also had Josh Flint sent off. And after the game all the chat from fans on social media was Elliot’s substitutions, especially the timing of them.

Elliot said: “Its frustrating when you concede and go down to ten men and we’ve been conceding set pieces and gave the penalty away but its something we need to improve on.

“There are loads of things we need to improve on collectively. It’s starting from myself I’m not going to shy away from that, I need to make sure I set the team up in the best possible way, set pieces whatever the structure may be both for and against, we want to score more goals, we want to keep it out of both ends.

"Obviously stepping up the level as well, the delivery for players in the box is something we need to adapt to.

"Again it’s another challenge and we need to look at these as challenge where we can get better and from what I’ve seen since I’ve come in is that players are getting better each time and they’re taking on the challenges really well and they’re in a good place and we just need to keep the momentum and keep the positive mentality in terms of attacking the league, we’ve got 35 games left and around 100 points to play for so we need to keep that consistency and calmness and not get too low and keep building every week.”

SEE ALSO Crawley Town manager address substitutions and suspensions as he looks ahead to Reading | Former Newcastle United keeper praises England's new assistant manager after Thomas Tuchel appointment

Elliot also admitted that he could have made slight alterations with his substitutions in the defeat but is also wary of keeping his players fit.

“You have to look at everything," he said. “Obviously at the time Junior [Quitirna] was tiring, [Ronan] Darcy and Rushian [Hepburn-Murphy] had injuries and also being down to ten men we knew they were going to put the ball into the box and be a lot more direct so we decided to put some more physicality on.

"The timing of Junior scoring, we could have kept him on longer for an extra five minutes but we also want to protect the players and Junior was at a level where he obviously had played a lot of games in the week and we needed to make sure we protected him as well because he’s such an important player for us.

“In hindsight maybe we should have given him more minutes. I’m not going to stand here and say I’ve got all the answers or I won’t get it wrong all I can do is be honest, hold my hands up, look at where we can improve and go again. I think the frustration was that we were so close, so in control, felt like we turned a corner and then the sending off changes the game, the substitutions and all the things add up so we’ve got to stay consistent.

"What we did up until that moment was fantastic, the way the players thought and the energy they put in when we went down to ten men for me was really good and I think we’ll be absolutely fine.”

The Reds travel to Reading on Saturday as they look to turn their bad run of form around this season.