'You can't ever switch off' - Crawley Town boss issues warning to players after shocking 45 minutes against Barnsley

It was the Reds first home defeat in five months and the first they had not scored at the Broadfield Stadium since the 2-0 defeat to Doncaster on Good Friday.

And it was a disastrous first half which led to the loss, with Barnsley taking a three goal lead into the break. Donovan Pines and Adam Phillips, who got a brace, gave Lindsey’s men a mountain to climb in the second half.

Lindsey made changes with new signing Will Swan and the returning Harry Forster played 45 minutes but the boss said his side played ‘out of control football’ which resulted in a lack of chances for his side.

And he added he thought some players were ‘still in bed’ which lead to an uncharacteristic sloppy first half performance.

"There's a saying in football where you can win a game inside 20 minutes, but the flip side of that is you can also lose one, and I felt that we did that,” he said. “I felt that Barnsley come here with full respect of us, I think they realise we're a good team.

“They sat off us a little bit to start with, then they slowly realised that we weren't at it and we made mistake after mistake and then they smelt blood and then they stepped forward and then beat us up.

“Obviously I had to make changes at half time, we then play a different system that we've not done all season, but we have to do something different and we then play out of control football for the whole of the second half, because we chasing a three-goal deficit.

“We change it and we do different things that we never do. It's just out control football and I wouldn't mind if he's out control football, if we'd have had opportunities to score, but we didn't.

“I think 56 minutes was the first chance on goal with a header from Toby and the first shot on target was on 92 minutes. So for all the out control football ball, it made no difference.”

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But Lindsey wants people to recognise this is still a new group of players. “They're very inexperienced, many of them. They're very young and also it's a new team, so we have to be mindful of that.

"We can’t expect to perform, like we did against Wigan last week, today we didn't and we have got to expect that every now and then.

"But we just can't start a game like that.

"Some plays out there were, I think, still in bed. To turn up, you've got over your eyes wide open, you've got to be engaged, you've got to be ready and you've got to be focused and we had no focus today. Some players didn’t certainly.”

When asked if he could put his finger on why it was such an uncharacteristic start, he said: “I can put my fingers right on it, we think that we've arrived already. We haven’t. We we sell ourselves. They see ourselves play so well in the game so far and get some really good results, and then we go to Brighton on Tuesday night to play so well. The way we played against a Premier League team is something to be proud of.

"But all of a sudden, we think we've arrived. You can't ever switch off and be like that in football, you have got to forget that, it’s gone and forget what's gone in the past.

"We have to focus on the here and now and we didn't do that today.”