‘I wasn’t expecting to start’ - New signing Kai Jennings on hitting ground running at Crawley Town
Kai Jennings reflected on his Crawley Town debut and admitted: I did not expect to be in the starting XI.
Jennings recently signed on loan from AFC Wimbledon and has been speaking about his first game in his new colours – while looking ahead to Bristol Rovers’ visit to Broadfield at the weekend.
The 20-year-old said: “It’s positive. Obviously we got our first win of the season in the league, which is important to get us going. It was a good win away from home.
"I thought we did well, we know there’s things we can improve and that’s what we’re working on. It’s a good start and we’re just looking to take that into Saturday.”
On his first appearance for the club Jennings said, “You can train all you want, but a game is always different so it was nice to just get in there straight away and I really enjoyed it, really enjoyed playing with the team.
"The boys have been wonderful with me, same with the management, so it’s a good feeling.”
The loanee was thrown straight into the starting XI against Rochdale last Saturday and said: “I wouldn’t say I was expecting to start. I wasn’t really expecting to. I didn’t really have any expectations.
"I didn’t know if I was going to start, I was just looking forward to whatever I could for the team and starting was positive, it’s nice. I didn’t expect it, but it was a nice surprise.”
The midfielder had a great chance to score in the opening couple of minutes at Rochdale which would have a perfect start to life at Crawley. He closed down the ball quickly winning it back in a dangerous position.
Jennings said, “I just want to show what I can do. There’s no better way to do it. It’s the second minute of the game, the game has just started; that’s what I want to bring, energy, trying to be a goal threat – obviously it didn’t go in but hopefully I’ll get many more chances like that and get a few more.”
The former Sutton United loanee outlined his ambitions and expectations for his time on loan at the Reds.
“No one wants to not play. Everyone wants to play football but you’ve also got to understand like this is league football, we’re not going to play every minute of every game.
"So it’s a good experience, being on the bench, coming on, playing well, playing bad – it’s just all development – but hopefully it’s more positive than negative.”
Focusing on this weekend’s game at home to Rovers Jennings said, “No matter who we’re against, as long as we’re at it, we feel like we can give a good fight – we can be the better team on the day.
"We fancy ourselves as long as we work hard … if we do the things we know we can do, then we feel like we should be quite a dominant team.”