“We were rubbish” – Lindsey’s honest opinion after Crawley Town’s defeat at Grimsby Town

A ‘dubious’ penalty on 10 minutes, slotted home by Josh Kabia, opened the scoring, Cameron McJannet headed home on 30 minutes and a strike from Evan Khouri in the second half completed the scoring.

Lindsey certainly didn’t pull any punches afterwards. He said “We were rubbish and that’s the truth of the matter. We weren’t very good at all. I think it was 57 minutes before we had a shot on goal. We were clearly off it today.

"They won every single second ball in the middle of the park. They competed better than we did, they run harder than we did, they wanted it more than we did. That’s not a reflection of me; it’s not a reflection of what I want. We were miles off it today and we deserved what we got, nothing so that’s the bad news.

“The good news is that it won’t reflect on anything we do this season. I remember the year we got promoted, we lost 6-0 to Swindon away quite early on in the season. It happens, I didn’t want that. It has happened, we will learn loads from it, and we have to obviously improve from that because we weren’t very good today.”

This performance wasn’t anything like the Reds showed during pre-season.

Lindsey said: “It’s not us at all. That performance hasn’t been what we’ve seen, but I thought Grimsby were very good today, but we allowed them to be good.

"They’re on the front foot straight away from the off. We need to have some really frank discussions in the dressing room, which I will have, and we’ve got to make sure that we show more willing to win a game or at least compete in a game than we did today.

“Me and Jamie Day said, after 20 minutes, it’s normal to come here and be under the cosh for 20 minutes. Usually we ride that out, we’ve always had good results here, but we’ve always been under the cosh for 20 minutes. We never come out of if for the whole game, we were second best in every single department, not acceptable for me. We just didn’t look anything like us today.

When asked about whether he thought it was a penalty, Lindsey said: “I was on a Zoom call on Wednesday that lasted an hour and a half, and it was all about what we can’t do and what we can’t say. We can’t do this, we can’t do that, so unfortunately, I’m not allowed to comment on anything that the referee does, so we’ll leave it at that.”

Lindsay said of the performance:“We will definitely be watching it back, but we have to look at it. We have to improve, we have to learn from it. We have to understand it because at the moment I am really scratching my head about how we was that bad today.”

Harry Forster picked up an injury after 38 minutes, which has left the Reds slightly short on the left side. “We had Papadopoulos come on the pitch today, who is not really a winger.

"We had young Fate (Kotey) come on making his league debut. He’s not played at this level ever, or even being close to playing at this level, so we’re a bit skinny in those areas at the moment but it is what it is. We have to patch them up, get down the road and see what it looks like for next week.” Lindsey commented.

However, Lindsey did have something to say about the fans, 221 of whom travelled to support the Reds. “I feel sorry for them. It wasn’t a nice watch and it’s a long journey, but they came in brilliant numbers, and they were fantastic before the game when I went over there.

"They stuck with us, and you know what, they were brilliant afterwards as well, clapping and showing their support. Fair play to them, but it wasn’t nice. I apologise to them for that performance.”