'Out-of-character' - Nightmare return to Notts County for Crawley Town midfielder

It was not a great game for the Reds, and Bajrami was quite honest in his appraisal. Speaking with BBC Sussex’s Gary Smith after the game, he said “The lads are a bit down. Can’t be happy after a 4-0 loss. A bit disappointing for myself. The lads were a bit sloppy at times today. They looked a little nervous out there and the scoreline kind of reflected that.

“You have your off days and whatnot, but I don’t think there’s much of an excuse for that today. I didn’t think we were bad in parts, and then the gaffer said to us in the changing room, we did a few out-of-character stuff second half, a few things that we would never do in training, so I’m not too sure why we’re doing it in games. And in the end, the scoreline reflected that.”

Bajrami injured his ACL whilst playing for Notts County, and he had nothing but good things to say about the club. He said “I appreciate everyone here at Notts County. In the second year, obviously I did my ACL and they looked after me. Went to Burton, and the staff there have been classy with me.

“So, it’s not been a great couple of years for me. But today’s my first ninety. Bit weird doing it back at Notts County. But no, on a personal level, I’m just buzzing to be back playing. I’m happy when I’m on the pitch and I’m glad I did that today.”

This defeat for Crawley came off the back of a three-game undefeated streak, and Bajrami was confident that roles will be reversed, and Crawley will be able to beat a side by the same scoreline this season. He said “Of course. Like you say, the last three games, I think we’ve been very good, very confident. Our patterns of play have been spot on, and the results have gone our way.

“We’ve played well. Hopefully we can look past this quickly, move on, see what we did well in the game, what we didn’t do so well and look forward to tomorrow.”

Crawley’s next game is at home to Barrow next Saturday, and the team will want to put this result right in front of the home fans. Bajrami said “Yeah of course. No one wants to play bad. That’s a given. and like you say, we need to go out there. We’re playing at home. We need to give the crowd something to cheer us on about.

“Me personally, I need to get my legs back, so I don’t mind a week’s rest. But you’d usually want to get it over with, get on to Tuesday and correct it. But obviously, we’ve got an extra three or four days, so we need to make the most of it.”