'You can't' - Crawley Town boss' damning assessment of Barnsley defeat

Goals from Jon Russell, former Red Max Watters and Davis Keillor-Dunn condemned Elliot’s side to defeat in their first game of 2025 and left them five points adrift in the League One relegation zone.

Elliot, who watched the game from the stands while he served a suspension, said that his side did not start performing until it was too late and defeat was already confirmed.

“They are a very good side, its always going to be a tough game but you can’t give them goals the way we did and then put yourselves on the back foot,” he said. “So even though I thought we showed glimpses, it’s a performance which gives us a real look at where we need to improve and how things need to change and we all need to take responsibility to get better.

“When the games done the pressures gone and you can start playing let’s be honest, its happened a couple of times now and it’s not acceptable. You need to be in the game at 60 minutes. You’re playing against top professionals’ sides and top professional players. Some of these have played in the Premier League for Barnsley.

"You need to make sure you manage it better. We didn’t manage the game well enough in the first 60 minutes. We didn’t do the basics well enough and then we get to 1-0 fortunately maybe and we start to get some more control first half and then second half we set everything up to go again and then we have a completely mad 15 minutes and we end up 3-0 down, the games gone and then we can’t have any impact on the game.”

The Reds had chances and forced saves from Tykes stopper Ben Killip but it was too little too late. Ellito said: “"Even if we score those chances can we come back from 3-0 I don’t know but you don’t want to be 3-0 down when you start playing and obviously, they made substitutions to sit back a little bit so I’ll take the fact that we can hurt teams and we can score goals but I don’t want to be seeing that at 3-0 I want to be seeing that at 0-0.”

And what was watching from the stand like for Elliot? “Its hard to get the information on and dictate the pace and the tempo but that’s the first for me at Crawley,” he said. “It is what it is, its not ideal but it was a tough day.”

The West Sussex side must now face a two-week break before they aim to get their first points in 2025 when they play Burton on Saturday, January 18.