'We have to now realise the seriousness of where we are' - Crawley Town boss emphasises Broadfield Stadium's potential to cause upset against League Two high-flyers Carlisle United

Crawley will host League Two high-flyers Carlisle United this weekend with a chance to move out of the relegation zone. Carlisle, however, face a six-hour journey down to the Broadfield Stadium just a week after another long journey away to Colchester.

“It’s a long way for them to travel and I do see it as an advantage,” said Scott Lindsey on Carlisle’s trip to Crawley. “I know from past experiences, that this [Broadfield Stadium] is not a nice place to come as an opposition team. I always found it hard here and I don’t think I had many positives results here as an opposition manager. It’s something I’m working towards with my players, letting everybody know how hard play us at home.”

Lindsey is unbeaten at home as Crawley manager this season after an impressive victory over Salford City and a 2-2 draw to Crewe Alexandre. This weekend however, third place Carlisle and their joint highest goal scoring tally in League Two, will look to upset that.

“They’re third in the table for a reason with the way they play,” added Lindsey on Carlisle. “Paul Simpson [Carlisle’s head coach] is a very good manager and somebody I really respect. He’s put together a really strong squad there. It’s going to be a very tough game but, all games are (tough). We’ve just got to make sure we are ready, understand our jobs and out work them.”

Crawley appointed Lindsey as their manager at the start of this year. Since then, the former Swindon Town boss has worked hard to regroup the Reds, an approach backed by his hard-work philosophy.

“With our running stats that I’ve picked up on, we’ve ran less in the games that we’ve lost.” Said Lindsey. “So, it’s pretty clear we’ve got to work harder than we have done.

“The best stats we’ve had was the Salford win, they were through the roof. We need to get back to that quickly, and starting Saturday hopefully we will see an improvement on that.”

Crawley dropped into the League Two relegation zone last weekend after Gillingham rose above the Reds and Hartlepool United. With only 17 games left for his side to fix the damage, Lindsey said, “We have to look at that (dropping into the relegation zone) now and think, we now have to really act.

“I know that we really needed to act anyway. But it almost shovels you into doing it. We have to now realise the seriousness of where we are. The results went our way on Tuesday night in terms of Rochdale and Hartlepool but, we can’t rely on them. We’ve got to rely on ourselves to get us out of this mess we are in.

Hartlepool and Rochdale’s losses on Tuesday night could give Crawley a huge advantage this weekend, alongside their four games in hand. To take advantage however, they’ll need to cause a huge upset against one of the league’s very best.