'Tactically we looked well' - Crawley Town boss reflects on first pre-season outing in front of the fans at Eastleigh

Dion Pereira scored what was the only goal of the game in the 23rd minute of play with a thumping shot which hit the underside of the crossbar on its way in.

On top of the victory Kazim-Richards was on the whole pleased with the way his side executed the tactical elements of the game but did highlight how the Reds could have played with more urgency. He said: “Tactically we looked well in terms of what we wanted to do out of possession, in possession.

“I thought we could have done a lot of things quicker, our ball speed could have been quicker, at the same time though the ideas and the pictures we wanted we did get, could we do it quicker and then once we did that could we then progress the ball a bit quicker.”

The 39-year-old described it as a “good run out” and went on to explain that he has left the game knowing what the squad need to improve on. “It was better to come away with it understanding what we need to work on a bit more and the speed we should work at it on,” he said.

Kazim-Richards, who is taking charge of his first full season as a Head Coach, was satisfied with what they got out of this friendly both for the staff and players. “I thought we got a lot out, what we wanted to work on, and got a lot out of what we are probably going to come up against, one big long ball and fight for that and second phase and third phase, it was good to get that [because] in the two behind the closed doors games we didn’t get that a lot in terms of what we would need in League Two 70% of the time,” he said.

The former Turkey international believes the squad are in a great place physically and said: “I thought every player could have played much longer but you don’t want to peak too fast so we kept the minutes to exactly what we wanted.”

The Crawley boss was again happy with the opportunity pre-season has given him to test different dynamics as well as seeing the mentality of the players both individually and collectively.

He said: “it’s great to be able to play around and look at certain different structures, certain different individuals within those structures.

“They all bring something that has quality, for me it's also in terms of the characters that we’ve actually got, the mentality that we’ve actually built here now and the individual mentality, they can actually see it so now when we are going over analysis and we are having our tactical meetings, they can actually see it and straight after the game they have exactly said to me what I was going to say to them and that is a beautiful thing to have that it shows they have all bought in, it shows they understand and they can see it.”

The Reds next take on Oxford United away on Tuesday evening which will be a different type of challenge for Kazim-Richards side.