'It was never a plan' - Crawley Town chairman addresses selling more than half of promotion-winning side

The Reds have seen a mass exodus of players this summer, including eight of the side who beat Crewe 2-0 in the League Two play-off final at Wembley.

It was a bit of a shock for Reds fans to see players such as Corey Addai, Danilo Orsi and Liam Kelly leave. But should it have been? It followed the same model and blueprint as last summer.

Preston Johnson, who was recently appointed as the club’s chairman and CEO after stepping down as co-chairman just weeks before, says he was surprised at the fans’ reaction to the transfer activity – but added it wasn’t the strategy to sell the players who have left.

He told us: “It was never a plan. If we were able to keep a lot of those players for this year’s team we definitely would have.

"Part of our model is assessing player impact relative to the price which is what e did last summer. A lot of our recruitment was getting guys from lower leagues which cost less but have similar impact as guys who cost three or four times as much and that was our strategy.

“We have to do a similar thing here now in League One. We are obviously looking at a bunch of bigger players.

"Truthfully, we were ultimately obligated to do a few of those sales this summer. It is what is and we wish them all luck. We are really proud of them and they earned it and deserve it and there were a couple that were more business-related. Offers came and we had to consider them. In some cases we turned down an offer, in other cases we accepted, one obviously with Liam Kelly."

Johnson added: “We never had the intention last summer ‘if this works we are going to sell everyone’.

"It’s all relative based on what is the cost right now based on current climate relative to the rest of the league. We did a pretty good job of finding players, developing them via Scott [Lindsey] and his staff, to where some of those names we were getting offers of two or three or even four times as much as we got them for.”

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But one of the main issues for fans was the lack of communication from ownership group WAGMI United about the selling of key and popular players. Did Johnson think the communication could be better? “We can probably always do everything we can do better so the answer is yes,” he said. “We could have done it better but personally I was surprised by the reaction because at the end of the day, I might be the most experienced person in the ownership group but I am still pretty new to English football in trying to understand the traditional values or ways that things are done.

"The same players they disliked last summer are the ones they hate us for letting go this summer. It took me some time to really internalise, ‘we went through this last summer and we got promoted to League, why is everyone so upset?’

"Some fans are more loud than others but truthfully I didn’t maybe recognise how unique it is that historically when a team gets promoted that squad tries to stay together and give them the chance and be better at the level up and so I have grasped that better now.

"If that was the case and I understood that part of the fan perspective earlier, then maybe we would have communicated it ourselves. But it would not have made any of these decisions different for sure, to be frank.”

Crawley Town ins so far: Jeremy Kelly (re-signed), Antony Papadopoulos (free), Charlie Barker (undisclosed fee), Josh Flint (free), Rushian Hepburn-Murphy (free), Scott Malone (undisclosed fee), Toby Mullarkey (undisclosed fee), Gavan Holohan (free), Michael Dacosta González (on loan until end of season from Bournemouth).

Crawley Town outs so far: Nick Tsaroulla (free), Adam Campbell (free), Will Wright (free), Danilo Orsi (undisclosed fee), Corey Addai (undisclosed fee), Klaidi Lolos (undisclosed fee), Liam Kelly (undisclosed fee), Kellan Gordon (free)

Released: Jed Brown, Travis Johnson, Tobi Omole, Florian Kastrati, Jayden Davis, Harry Ransom, Roshan Greenshall, Mustapha Olagunju