Rowberry pays tribute to his players despite home defeat

First-half goals from Ashley Nadesan and Ludwig Francillette fired the visitors to a fourth win in their last five matches to keep their playoff hopes alive.

Following Friday’s win, they are 12th in the table on 57 points, 10 adrift of seventh-placed Sutton with five games to go.

The setback was the third home defeat on the spin for County, who are currently eighth and just one point off Sutton in the final playoff place.

“We paid for a poor first half. We weren’t our usual selves and that ultimately cost us the game,” said County boss James Rowberry, who saw his team drop out of the play-off places as a result of their third successive home defeat.

“We need to be better and we will be better and we will go again. We weren’t able to get our passing game going and there were too many turn overs from our own doing.

“We didn’t win enough first-contact second balls and didn’t defend our box well enough.

“On the positive side of things we addressed a few things at half-time and came out and were better in the second half.

“The players have been terrific for me since I’ve been here and we’ve just got to learn from this and go again. We spoke about a few tactical tweaks at half-time and a few things around the edge of our box. We needed to get in behind their back line and to stretch the game.

“We got a great goal in the second half and we had enough chances to get another. I felt we did enough to get an equaliser. We have got to learn from this and go again on Monday.

“I’m not concerned about three defeats on the bounce at home because I think we can easily rectify that.”

Ruling nothing out

Crawley boss John Yems is ruling nothing out in his side’s bid to sneak into the League Two play-offs after seeing them down fellow promotion hopefuls Newport.

Yems, who confessed he has seen his team play better and lose, said: “As long as I’ve got a hair on my head and breath in my body I’ll keep fighting. We’ll keep on going.

“It was a good first half, but not our best this season. I’ve seen us play better than that and get beaten.

“At 2-0 up at half-time I just asked the lads to go on and win the game professionally. We didn’t play as well in the second half, but they are a good side.

“We did our homework and we imposed ourselves on them in the first half and created loads of chances. Francillette got his first goal for us and good luck to him – he deserved it.”

Two goals in the space of four minutes from Nadesan and Francillette gave Crawley complete control.

The first came in the 15th minute and was created from a deep cross from the right which was headed on by Kwesi Appiah to allow Nadesan to pick up the pieces and tap home.

Francillette doubled the lead soon after when he drilled home a low strike following a corner.

County hit back with a goal in the 58th minute from James Waite but they could not force an equaliser.