Crawley Town Season Preview: Dutch courage

Crawley Town have tried contrasting styles over the last two years: hoof ball under Mark Yates and keep ball under Dermot Drummy. Unfortunately, neither approach has proved successful, resulting in 20th and 19th placed finishes respectively. Is now the time for the club to decide on one philosophy and stick to it? Supporters Al and Branchy from the Redz Bar Chat podcast have their say…

Both ‘eras’ were so different, Yates had to make a patchwork squad with no money, so the hoof ball was the only way we could play given the circumstances, in our opinion Yates worked wonders. Drummy underestimated this league, sure every fan would love to see the ‘Barca style’ but in league 2 the pitches don’t let you play that way, so a bit of naivety on his part, which was a massive shame. The club need someone who has the experience of this league and builds a team that is hard to beat or at least a pain to play, we need to make the checkatrade/broadfield a place where teams don’t like to play as we make it hard for them.

You out-shot your opponents in just 22% of your games – only relegated Hartlepool did so less frequently. Were the players afraid to try their luck? 

I don’t think they were afraid to try their luck, we think we played too deep at times and then not playing the right out ball, we also relied on Collins a bit too much. Also the way we played at times the ‘possession way’ would see us get into good positions out wide to put the ball in the box but we wouldn’t have any bodies in there so we would go back and build again resulting in us losing possesion, we couldn’t tell you the amount of times we got to the edge of the box and shouted shoot!! Only to be met with a tame ball square which would easily get cut out.

Harry Kewell is a well-regarded figure in the game, but not yet in a non-playing capacity. Was it a risk to appoint him as head coach?

Any appointment is a risk really, HK unlike DD has played at the highest level so should instantly get the players respect as he has played at a level they haven’t, he can actually get in a players head and know what its like from a players prospective about what to do and how to approach situations, also having WF as his number 2 could be a shrewd move as he is someone who knows this league, and has had to work with a team with a small budget.

Attacking wide man Enzio Boldewijn proved popular after joining from the Eerste Divisie (Dutch second tier). Are you hopeful that Moussa Sanoh will have a similar impact? And is the club right to recruit in Holland?

Only time will tell, it seems the club know the Dutch market, Enzio has a full season under his belt now so hopefully he can push on from his impressive first season, MS comes with the same hype as Enzio. To be able to get very capable players for good money is essential for us, so yeah the club could be right to recruit from there.

Another signing from the Netherlands is striker Thomas Verheydt while Matt Harrold has signed a new deal. Does the fact you’ve got two tall strikers available suggest we can expect early balls into the box?

We do think we will be more direct, HK and WF have both said they want players to work hard for the shirt, so I can imagine it be balls up to the big man and the the wide men playing off him. You would like to think with a player of Cox’s ability would be a dream for Verheydt to feed off.

Top scorer James Collins has left for Luton Town this summer. How big a loss will he be?

Like any goal scorer would be, especially as you highlighted earlier we didn’t create much, but it is a new management team with new methods, for all we know Collins might not have fitted into the style we will play or HK wants to impose. He could have been wasted. As we see last season Collins wanted ball to feet and didnt do too well when the ball was in the air up to him. The guy did well for us, but like most strikers that have a decent season in a team that finished where we did, it was always going to be hard to keep hold of him.

The other attacking players joining are Panutche Camara, jumping up three divisions while Watford loanee Dennon Lewis has his first taste of professional football. How do you see them faring?

Sounds like Dennon Lewis didn’t set the conference alight last year, but we will see how he gets on, Dulwich Hamlet fans speak very highly of Panutche so hopefully he could be a bit of a find. We won’t know the true extent of his ability until we see him in the warm up games.

Centre-back Mark Connolly has knowhow while new midfielder Dannie Bulman recently won promotion with AFC Wimbledon. Given that a lot of the new players will be in some way acclimatizing, is it good to have one or two experienced leaders in the dressing room?

We also have Glenn Morris and Matt Harrold as well as Dean Cox and Jimmy Smith so we would say we have more the two experienced leaders in our dressing room, it is so vital to have, especially in this league when every game is a battle, a physically intense competition game after game, you need these people to give you that boost on and off the pitch.

Left-back Cedric Evina joins on a season-long loan from Doncaster. Are you encouraged by his experience at a higher level?

In a sense not really, we had Andre Blackman last season who had played at decent levels as well as playing for Celtic in the SPL and he was, to be polite, dire… the only encouragement we can take is hopefully he isn’t as bad as that, pessimistic we know.

You conceded 1.54 goals per game last season, but on the 11 occasions when Josh Yorwerth completed 90 minutes, the average was 1.18. Do you hope to keep him fit?

Josh is a good young player and we are glad he has singed on for another year, the reason i think that stat is the way it is, is because when Josh did play it was mainly in a back 3, I don’t see our centre backs being the main issue, it was more down our flanks, we were getting horribly exposed our full backs leaving our centre-back’s 2 on 3 or 2 on 4 in occasions, which is crazy.

Only four players have been released this summer and none of those were defenders. Surprised?

Very much so, mainly surprised that Arthur and Blackman weren’t released especially after signing CE. It’s still early days into pre-season yet so surely some more have to go as the squad is looking too big and very unbalanced, as one of our fans joked, it looks like we will be playing 7 in midfield.

What are your thoughts ahead of the League Two season as a whole? Any potential dark horses?

We are excited, we want it to get going, its great that we have teams like Lincoln coming up, who have done some very good business as well as Cambridge and of course Luton, we fancy Lincoln to go up, possibly Cambridge as dark horses, they have made some very solid signings in Gary Deegan and Jabo Ibehre to name two.

The bookies have Crawley at 3/1 for relegation and 100/30 for a top half berth – where will you finish?

Realistically round-a-bout where we finished last season, although we feel we are better than 19th place, a mid-table finish would be fantastic. We predict 16th.

The Football Lab’s Verdict

Crawley’s recruitment has been somewhat avant-garde. Boldewijn poses a threat but with Collins leaving, the new players will need to acclimatize quickly. So will Kewell, who begins senior management working with the same defence that shipped 71 goals last term. 22nd